As of January 1st, 1998, FullWrite became a free product and may be downloaded from this web site. FullWrite Professional™ is a Macintosh™ Word Processor for large and academic oriented writing projects.

As of February 2004 a new website appeared called Akimbo.com which may, or may not, have connections to the previous Akimbo company in Massachusetts. To quote directly from their site Akimbo is: " ...the first fully functional marriage of TV and the Internet, combining easy access to new and fresh shows with the comfort of watching them on your TV." And they seem to be a really good company. In the interests of full disclosure I do not want the new company finding this reference when they "google" themselves and going after me about the use of the company name. So, this paragaph is here to make sure my readers understand the difference between the old Akimbo Systems and the new Akimbo Systems Inc. From the pictures of the management they seem to be really capable and serious people. As their current business is not remotely (pun intended) connected to our favourite legacy word processor I'm hoping they will understand the prior existence of a company name and let me serve my small community without incident.

And the latest updates to this site include a page describing my experiences with translating file types from FullWrite Professional into other word processors. My remarks can be found here and a list of new resources to support current users of FullWrite can be found here. Now this doesn't mean I'm providing tech support. If you can't make it work like I did, read carefully and follow along slowly. It took me a while to get it, but I did.

SAVE THIS NUMBER: YOU WILL NEED IT THE FIRST TIME YOU RUN FullWrite Professional™.

Please read all of these instructions before installing FullWrite. After installing I suggest you read through all of the accompanying read me documents (found in the "Other Read Me Files" folder).

To install FullWrite Professional™, download the FullWrite 2 Net Installer (1.4 MB)

After you download it double-click the FullWrite 2.0.6 Installer application. Follow the instructions to install FullWrite 2 on your hard disk.

To run FullWrite for the first time, Double-click on the installed copy of FullWrite on your hard disk. Type your serial number exactly as shown above, including all dashes and any special characters. Make sure to save this serial number in a safe place should you reformat or have a hard drive failure.

After you have installed FullWrite, please read the "FullWrite 2 Read Me" and "What's new in FullWrite 2" files for other important information.

POWERMAC USERS: Make sure to read the instructions for adjusting FullWrite's preferred memory size in the "FullWrite 2 Read Me" document. You MUST turn off the Modern Memory Manager in the Memory control panel for improved reliability when using FullWrite. Due to limitations in Apple's newer systems, FullWrite does not work with System 7.6 or 7.6.1 on PowerMacs (your mileage may vary). Results with MacOS 8 and 8.1 are inconsistent, so we can't tell you if it will work on your machine. The only way to find out is to try it. Some users are able to run it without problems (see this comment), while others report reliability problems. Some users have reported removing the Picture Extension from the FullWrite Extensions folder and increasing the amount of memory allocated to FullWrite to 5MB or more helps.

VIRUS CHECKING – FullWrite will perform a self-diagnosis every time it is run and will report any problems detected. If you see a message indicating FullWrite has been damaged, your system probably has a virus. You should use appropriate virus detection software before proceeding. Most applications do not check for viruses so it is quite likely that no other application will notice the infection. You may get other dialogs describing other circumstances so read the text carefully.

UPGRADE NOTE – If you are upgrading from a prior version, you should remove the old version from your hard disk. Otherwise the system may use the wrong version of FullWrite when you open a document. To remove your old version of FullWrite, drag the old FullWrite application file to the Trash. If you are upgrading from FullWrite 1.x, you can also remove your old FullWrite dictionary and thesaurus files which will either be in your System Folder or the folder containing your old FullWrite application (FullWrite 2's new dictionary and thesaurus files are located in the FullWrite Extensions folder). FullWrite 2 will automatically convert 1.x documents as they are used. You do not need to do anything special to allow FullWrite 2 to use your old documents.

WARNING – Make sure you don't accidentally trash any of your existing documents when removing the old version of FullWrite from your hard disk. Before installing any software, or deleting any files from your hard disk, it's always a good idea to make sure you have a current backup of the files on your hard disk.

XTND System works in Classic Mode – I have recently come into the possession of a ZIP of the Claris XTND system to use with FullWrite Professional™. The Claris XTND System (20 KB) goes into a Claris Folder inside the System Folder. Look for instructions on this PDF. One reader reports this to be working in OS 9.2.2 on their machine.

Here are some links to more information about FullWrite Professional™

Images of the product box and other things Some remarks from Dave Trautman about his experiences owning FWPro. Gallery of images from the manuals (with enlargements) – includes QRC pages for those with slow modems. A PDF version of the Quick Reference Card 67MB ! – 8 page scan from version 1.5 suitable for printing. – But here's another much smaller one for viewing on a browser. Quick Reference Card 1MB A link to the article which started all this.

This was the kind of Mac I used FullWrite with.

This page was written by Dave Trautman and has been adapted from material contained in the original Ashton-Tate™ version of the program. Dave Trautman is not responsible for supporting Akimbo™ Products but Dave Trautman does endorse and use the product mentioned. If you have any questions about FullWrite™ or Akimbo's other product, "Globetrotter™" after downloading them you can contact him for casual assistance.

Trademarks of Akimbo Systems Inc., used by permission.