Hurricane fills the sails of high-end systems; but memory manager is becalmed on low-end systems. (Helix Software's Hurricane for Windows 95 version 2.01 memory enhancement utility) (Software Review)(Evaluation)

THE BOTTOM LINE: GOOD

Hurricane for Windows 95, Version 2.01

Hurricane for Windows 95 will noticeably improve the speed of high-end systems, but on low-end systems the performance increase may be poor; it may even cause a performance degradation.

Pros: WinPack can provide noticeable performance boosts, even on low-end machines.

Cons: Not compatible with Matrox video cards; can't launch multiple files with WinPack; can't paste text cut from a WinPacked file elsewhere.

Helix Software Co., Long Island City, N.Y.; (800) 451-0551, (718) 392-3100; fax: (718) 392-4212; sales@helix software.com; http://www.helixsoftware.com/hurrican.html.

Price: About $40 to $50 street, free upgrade for 1.0x users.

Platforms: Windows 3.x, Windows 95.

I can think of no software niche that has been as much maligned as Windows memory enhancement utilities. (See Product Comparison, March 18, page 1.) That's thanks mostly to last year's public-relations nightmare with SoftRAM. But that utility really doesn't deserve to share the same ink with Helix Software Co.'s Hurricane for Windows 95, Version 2.01, which I can recommend -- at least for high-end systems.

When I began testing Hurricane, though, I had a very different …