I see a lot of shills here trying to keep the 5-star rating that the new owners of MainMenu have not earned. While it's welcome to see some honesty in changing the ''freeware'' designation to ''shareware'' finally, it was accomplished only at an uproar by what some see as a disgruntled bunch.

We (and by ''we'' I mean the ''disgruntled'') are upset that this wonderful, ''working just fine thank you'' utility was snatched up by someone, slapped with a coat of paint and shoved out the door as 2.0, along with a $20 price tag.

Honestly, MainMenu was a really wonderful and useful little utility for what it was. It allowed some degree of safety in performing system tasks that probably should be performed at the super-user level ala reboot using the best all-around hands-down utility there is for this, AppleJack--but MainMenu allowed some quick and simple things like purging your DNS and permissions repair--but everything else is available anywhere else and for free.

I urge those who think ''we'' are being ''disgrunteld'' to take a look at another utility available on VersionTracker this new company snatched up called SlidePad. The difference between MainMenu and SlidePad is totally different as MainMenu was genuinely a useful and novel utility (before it was ''repainted''). SlidePad on the other hand was a brutally shameless rip-off of a totally free utility called sideNote, which has been around for years and has been free--and is still actively maintained by the original developer.

There is nothing in the ''new and improved'' MainMenu that warrants charging $20. I can buy a can of paint and repaint myself, because that's really all this ''upgrade'' amounts to.

So what seems to be the trend here? Why would the same company who played the shareware-freeware shell game with MainMenu snatch up something as disreputable as SlidePad?

Decide for yourself if you want to throw away good money (and way too much of it) at a cosmetic makeover. Then find AppleJack here on VersionTracker and find out just how free and much more thorough (not to mention safe) it is.

And--just for some cozy nostalgia, keep the ''old'' MainMenu running for free too. It may disappear from VersionTracker, but I'm sure folks like me still have it somewhere and can make it available to interested parties.