Micromat Announces TechTool Protege

SANTA ROSA, CA – January 5, 2006 – Micromat Inc., developer of Macintosh
disk repair and maintenance technology, today announced TechTool Protege.
TechTool Protege is a compact, bootable diagnostic and repair tool. It
contains the full-featured Macintosh troubleshooting program TechTool Pro,
Micromat’s disk partitioning program DiskStudio, as well as several other
utilities on a compact, one gigabyte FireWire flash drive. Its tiny size
makes it easy to carry at all times so that one can test and repair
Macintosh computers whenever the need arises. TechTool Protege is extremely
durable since it is a solid state device. Unlike a hard drive, it has no
moving parts and is not affected by being bumped or dropped. Unlike a CD,
it contains ample space to install other programs, is durable, and
extremely fast.

According to Christian Pickman, project manager for TechTool Protege, “The
beauty of TechTool Protege is that multiple programs reside on a single
bootable device. Unlike CDs, the programs and operating system can easily
be updated on a regular basis. Moreover, the boot time is much faster than
a CD. The user can simply pull TechTool Protege out of their pocket, boot
the computer with it, and begin work in a matter of seconds.” He notes that
this is not currently possible with a USB device, since the Macintosh
cannot boot from USB under Mac OS X.

Shawn Titen, Service Manager at MacNetworks, had an opportunity to work
with TechTool Protege and commented, “This is nice, as I can plug it
directly into the FireWire port of a machine and the computer booted from
this drive, faster than a CD. I am able to run diagnostics and check stats
on the computer. Small enough to fit in a pocket, makes it handy to carry
around. This makes my job as a technician so much easier. No more looking
for power source, and no need to find a FireWire cable.”

TechTool Protege is able to:

* Diagnose Macintosh hardware
* Diagnose and repair hard drive problems
* Optimize and defragment hard drive volumes
* Rebuild volume directories
* Recover data from damaged volumes
* Repartition hard drives without losing data
* And other diagnostic functiions

Price and Availability
TechTool Protege is available today and will be shown at the Macworld
Conference & Expo in San Francisco next week. It can be ordered through
select dealers and resellers worldwide or directly from Micromat, Inc. The
suggested retail price is $229.00. For further information, please visit
http://www.micromat.com.

About Micromat Inc.
Micromat pioneered the Macintosh diagnostic software market in 1990 by
introducing the very first commercially available diagnostic program,
MacEKG. Since then, Micromat has helped millions of Macintosh users repair
their computers, retrieve lost data and keep their systems running their
best.