File Managers...
Life beyond Exploder.....
Monday, April 21, 2008 by Jafo | Discussion: Personal Computing
For me it all started before Windows....in Dos ....and a proggy called Xtree, XTPro and finally XTGold.
Great stuff...but as computers got bigger it hit the 640k limit and went belly-up in 32 bit Win Vers.
Then there was ZTreeWin ....a one-man development that had 'no limits'...still a 'text' file manager...but if you were used to Xtree....you were at home with this one.
Alternate shell users [particularly Litestep] never wanted to inadvertently invoke the dreaded Exploder shell while using the file-managing aspect of it...so looked for alternatives.
The first I started using with much enjoyment was Powerdesk....soon handing over the dosh for the 'Pro' version..... did native zip-handling and file viewing [images, etc] and was so much better than explorer the latter was just plain clunky and inept.
Then there was ExplorerPlus. I still think it was the bastard child of a coporate take-over gone weird.... as it was essentially the same animal as PDPro....just the players' parent companies were different.
Even in Exploder [the shell] I still simply use ExplorerPlus to manage files.... [and ZTree as well], as it's simply more powerful [feature-rich]....who cares if you have to pay? Worth every penny.
The other day the [again] new owners of ExplorerPlus emailled me with their tale of woe...about how they were hoping to get the proggy compatible with Vista [as it wasn't yet]...and had discovered it was going to take a crap-load of time, effort and money to do....which prompted them to look at how/if others were doing it [Vista compatibility]......
....and discovered Directory Opus 9 , a proggy originating out of Brisbane, Queensland [Australia, for the head-scratchers...
].
Now, I'm not quite sure WHY one Co should be steering their customers towards another...but that's what they did.
Anyway....with a bit of configuring it's identical to the setup/style/appearance of ExplorerPlus....but it's got so many MORE capabilities I'd be going on for 'yonks' listing them, like 'Windowblinds-aware' - always good to see configs listing WB, etc. And it works in Vista as well [though I haven't been able to demonstrate that myself....yet...but at least when I get up and running in Vista I'll STILL be able to steer clear of boring old Exploder].
$85 smackers AUS-style and it's yours. I think it'll be worth it. [about $80 USD].
Online tutorial....shows what it can do....
http://www.pretentiousname.com/opus/index.html#introduction
And a Pic...of it doing 'things'...
Reply #2 Monday, April 21, 2008 11:12 AM
Reply #3 Monday, April 21, 2008 7:53 PM
Ah! That's just down the road from my place... might just have to go in there and check this proggie out... and while I'm at it, ask if there's a discount for self-shipping/having to lug it home myself.
Seriously, thanks for the heads up, Jafo, I've been using 'Xplorer2 Lite' for a while now, but this Opus proggie warrants some serious checking out.
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Reply #1 Monday, April 21, 2008 10:28 AM
I've been using Explorer with a bunch of plug-ins like Super Copier2 and QTTabBar as well as PowerDeskPro. I "glanced" at Opus a year or two ago and decided it was a little pricey.