Bob P said:
Not even close. Total Commander (
http://www.ghisler.com/)
will replace Explorer, Winzip and probably a dozen other
utilities simultaneously. It's the first program that I
load on every computer.
US$ 32. You can try it out for free. It's a small
download. There's also a forum for those digging way deep
down into its capabilities.
I too would like a replacement for Windows Explorer but I'm afraid
Total Commander isn't it. It's far too hard to use, intuitively
un-obvious, and has all sorts of functions I really don't want but is
missing those that I do.
There's another file management package called ZtreeWin which is a 32
bit re-write of the excellent DOS Xtree. Unfortunately it's
unnecessarily complex. The makers of both Ztree and Total Commander
seem to have forgotten that we live in a graphical age and use a mouse
for most of the things one needs in such a package. We might bemoan
the waste inherent in using gigabytes of memory and gigahertz of
processing power to do things which in the past were done in Kbytes
and Mhertz but now that we have the super speed and space let's use
it.
For example, any replacement should read the directories of all the
local disks attached to the system at execution time and keep the info
in memory and update it there. Finding any file based on any search
argument should be done at memory speed.
Every file should be listed. I object to being treated as a child by
Bill.
As you scroll down the list of files the other pane should show a
character representation of the content of the file under the cursor
(just the first thousand bytes or so). If you want to really
investigate it you click on the display panel and have the option of
text, hex, (where possible) interpreted WP file, picture, first frame
of video,... etc. In hex mode you should be able to directly edit the
file on disk (like the old Xtree).
The rename function is limited in Total Commander and looks more
extensive in Ztree but is impossible to understand in either package.
Basically you need a function that for any selected groups of files
(which could span folders and even disks) would allow you to replace
any string of characters with any others, to insert strings at desired
points, to remove strings and squeeze out the resultant space, to
covert to upper or lower case or initial caps,... and to do all the
above conditionally (e.g. only remove the "12" in the file name if the
name starts with "Q" and the file's not an executable).
Well, I could go on forever. I'm glad both provided trial copies which
saved me wasting my money. Of course Total Commander's payment system
(in Swiss Francs) is symptomatic of the package--too complex--and
would probably have meant I wouldn't have bought anyway.
So if you know of any others to try, I'm all ears.
