Back in the early days of Windows 95, it was obvious Microsoft hadn't put much thought into Windows Explorer, the file management utility. Even back then, just about everybody used File Commander (or Norton Commander after Norton bought the rights). When that product went belly up, it was time to find something to fix Microsoft's oversight. An oversight that exists to this day.
I got lucky, finding PowerDesk+. That later begat both PowerDesk and ExplorerPlus, two off-shoots from the same base. By my count, the PD+/PD/Ex+ family ended up as property of eight different companies over the years. I bought each version. I bought version 6's of BOTH PowerDesk AND ExplorerPlus. The most recent versions of the programs are now lost in a haze. ExplorerPlus, last of Novatix in terms of development, now seems to be property of some on-line photo company that won't list the product on its site. PowerDesk belongs to V-Com and V Communications seems to have no interest in updating it.
And it needs updating. Because there is a bug in the program that is caused by big hard drives and trying to keep track of operations to undo them. Where the 40G drive was extravagant when PowerDesk 6 was released, today, it's possible to purchase 1T drives. That's terabytes. That's 1024G. That's a problem.
I've sent off emails (and even offered solutions, since afterall, I am a programmer) as long as two years ago. Did it again on the weekend. No reply.
Sooooo, I tried some others. Directory Opus has some nice features. But it lets eye candy get in the way. It only costs 20 bucks, but I thought, after testing it, that I could make do with PD/EX+ 6. It didn't offer much more for the price. I also took a look at Total Commander and xplorer2 and didn't care much for them. Still looking, I finally stumbled on UltraExplorer at http://mustangpeak.net/
Now, this is NOT as good, or as intuitive as PD/EX+ 6. But it DOES have many of the features I have come to expect in my file manager. And it doesn't groan under the weight of my 1.4T of file storage on my network. A few third-party utilities, like 7-Zip for compressed file handling and Irfanview for graphic-file viewing makes up the gap. Magic Folder Icon takes care of my need for certain folder icons to stand out in the treeview pane. All in all, it's a pretty good first night with the program.
Are there warts? I do ALL of my file-handling in details view. I spend most of my time in date modified sort order, followed mostly by name order. Every now and then, I want to sort by extension. There is NO extension column available in UEx. That's an issue I'll take that up with the developer (who programs in Delphi, which is a PRO argument). The quicklaunch bar has to be edited through a window, rather than using drag and drop. The default setting on folders is to produce very thin columns in details view. You have to resize them for each folder. Arrrrgggh!
All in all, barring some miracle version 7 of my preferred programs, I think UltraExplorer might end up being the file manager of choice here, and with my clients. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention one other PRO argument.
It is FREE!
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