If you’re anything like me, you’ll be working on 3 things at once on your computer. As you get more and more productive (messy? cluttered?) your task bar will become more and more difficult to read. Well this program will hopefully help with all of that clutter, by reducing the number of “My Computer” or “My Documents” folders open. And as a bonus it has lots of system type things available too.
The program is called “Free Commander” and anybody who still remembers the classic Windows 3.1 File Manager, will feel immediately at home. The main difference between the two however is that File Manager could have as many windows open as you wanted, while Free Commander has only 2. But then why would you need more than 2 anyway?? The program is simplicity itself – once fired up you are presented with buttons for every drive mapped across the top of each of the two windows. By careful inspection you can also have a “tree” view, where you have the folders and drives down the left hand side, with the contents on the right (for a truly File Manager-esque look.) So what? I hear you ask. Think back to when you last had to move files around. The default way to do that would be to open My Computer. Then open another one. Resize them so you can see both. Then navigate through them both until you find your source/destination directories.. It all just feels a little too fiddly. With Free Commander you have access to a much more intuitive way to copy things. And if you use it to browse files normally too, you will always have the option to copy easily if you need to.
But that’s not all Free Commander does. It has lots of little tricks up it’s sleeve. For instance, you can open a DOS prompt from whatever directory you’re in. Or you can display common system directories and go directly to them. You also have a file search just one click away. And you can even have the Control Panel available as a drop down menu. All tidy & completely uncluttered. I could go on and on, but I might spoil some of the surprises hidden away in the menus. Even after using Free Explorer for half an hour, I’m still finding myself saying things like, “That’s a good idea!” and “That makes things a bit easier.”
So any downside to this then? Well I thought I had a problem with it. I thought, “That’s a bit rubbish, why isn’t that in there? Why is there no shortcut to your My Documents folder?” Then I found it. It’s one of the buttons slap-bang in the middle of the screen. D’oh! So there we are.. Absolutely perfect piece of software for all your file management needs. [SHOW ME]