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Thread: Free Commander

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    Free Commander

    Did already someone try out Free Commander, the Windows Explorer alternative? I just have it running now, and it seems to be nice. Set it up with all the functions I need, was very easy. It looks a bit like DOpus but is free.

    http://www.freecommander.com/index.htm

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    I use it on some of my other PC's; not bad and you can't complain for free. Infinitely better than using Windows Explorer.

    It's no Total Commander however, the one which I use on my main desktop - worth every penny that program.
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    I used it quite some time ago, but I'm happy with Window 7's Explorer as that does most of what I need daily.

    I'm also a fan of Total Commander, and use it sometimes when i need to batch rename whole directories of files. A god send when needing to rename a sequence of images, or files for a website directory structure. I also like some of the other build in features such the file comparisons, as it removes the need for separate programs for each thing.

    For file managers I do however still like Directory Opus the most. The PC version is still very good, and Microsoft seemed to take a lot of ideas from that when updating Explorer... such as the way the hierarchy of the current directory is navigated. I don't tend to install it though because I don't like things that start to mess with the core OS files.

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    I installed Directory Opus now again, and I'm using the 60 days trial version. I really consider buying it later, as it has so many nice functions. It also includes now (don't know if it always had this) a synchronizing option, which comes very handy. I tried it out now with 5 folders that had to be updated, and it worked like a charm. After synchronizing one folder, I checked it again with my usual program which is Vice Versa, and it told me that they were 100% synchronized, and that with all of the 5 folders. So it works pretty well.

    Also FTP, favorites, dual screen, converting images, splitting and joining files, zip function, find duplicates, showing complex metadata of my mp3 files... work very well, have to say at the moment I don't regret trying it out again, and I'm pretty sure that in the end I will buy it.

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    I've been tempted to give it a try again myself. Now you have I might this week.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


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    I came across the first things I dislike, but I really dislike, it's a major problem, for me.

    It all has to do with the folders. I was setting it up so that it recognizes music straight away, and then shows me colums with name, duration, artist, genre, year aso. That also worked fine. But all the other folders now happen to have these colums too, which I don't want. After reading some tutorials, I saw that you can save your settings, and then replace all other folders with the same. But still most folders kept the other setting, annoying.

    So after again reading long tutorials I found out that you can change the folder formats for different types like documents, music, movies, archives, pictures. So I edited all of them to set to my desire. But still no satisfaction after this, because it doesn't recognize every single format, so that it shows pictures, music and documents correctly, but some other formats it also tries to show as music for example. And then again the colums are completely wrong.

    I also noticed that it doesn't f.ex. recognize .mkv video files, and I tried to edit the movies setting to add the extension. But after searching and searching I didn't find that setting, perhaps there isn't, although I doubt that with literally almost 1 million settings.

    Also with the documents I wanted to additional colums, being author and pages. It shows fine, but browsind another folder with f.ex. adf files, it wants to display the same structure with author and pages, as it doesn't know that extension, but assumes that it has something to do with a document. And that is annoying because these two colums are completely irrelevant for an adf file. You can also let it recognize programs formats, but believe me, that made it even worse!

    So I unchecked several formats to be recognized by DOpus, and only chose pictures and music, as that seemed to work well. But again I had to edit and change the colums, replace folders with the settings, but finally it seemed to work, only to notice that in the dual screen it doesn't change the settings automatically, you have to do it for that screen seperately.

    Also I want my folders to be displayed in details view, other than f.ex. the pictures folders. That seems also to be a problem. It shows a lot of my folders with the stupid thumbnails, what am I supposed to do with thumbnails when there's no pictures? So you can change the view, but going to the next folder, it shows thumbnails again. So I did again the replace all option, display every folder than this one, but still it shows me most (not all) folders with thumbnails. Don't get it working properly.

    The only thing that I think about which I could do, is browse to every single folder, and set it to a format that you want it to be, but then even in one folder could be one program, one document and one movie, and it would mess up the things again. With music and pictures now it works at the moment, but the rest really annoys me a lot. It's nice to be able to set it up completely to your likings, but if you have to go through pages of tutorials, and having the feeling that you must have graduated from university to use this program, it completely fails it's main target, which is being a normal file manager.

    I might as well go back to Windows file manager, or perhaps give Total Commander a try.

    There's only 2 main things annoying me in Windows file manager, although they annoy me a lot.

    First of all when I download or save a file, the small window opens to ask me where to put the file. I then scroll on the left side to a folder, try to click on it, but then it jumps back to the initial default (or last used) folder it was. So I have to scroll to that fodler I want again. It does it all the time. Don't know if you get what I mean? As I have many disks, and a huge folder tree, it's really annoying if it does that. I would say it waits for 4-5 seconds, then jumps back to default folder.

    Almost the same happens during my 2nd problem, which is scrolling in the folder tree on the left in the file manager. You open one folder, and it jumps down all the way, so you have to scroll up again. Then you chose the 2nd level of the folder tree, and *BAM*, it again jumps down. Why can't it just stay where you are and not jump down? It's trying to help, but it's actually not helping at all, let me chose when I want to scroll down, if I change levels of my folders, just stay focused where I am.

    It's difficult to explain these 2 problems, if I would show you, you would probably say, ah yeah, that happens to me all the time too. But explaining in words is a bit difficult, so hopefully someone knows what I mean

    Cheers.

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    That same issue with folder view type happens with Windows Explorer so it isn't specific to DOpus itself. Maybe it is using a combination of both the standard Windows method and DOpus' one?

    I suppose the problem is that DOpus is so powerful that there will always be something that isn't perfect for anyone somewhere in its design and way of working. Personally I just have the default for folders set to show a general directory layout, and then manually set specific folders to display for specific content when needed. I don't know if DOpus can do the same, but in Windows Explorer (all NT versions since Win 2000), you have been able to set a folder view in a root folder and then set it so all child directories inherit the same settings. This is very useful for example when you have all your music inside one parent directory as you can set that directory to view as music files, and make all child directories take on the same settings. Speeds things up.

    Regarding the download folders, I know exactly what you mean. I also find it will remember where the last location was you downloaded to, but keep jumping back to that location during your attempt to select a new download location. Or it defaults to the Windows 7 library folders which I hate and ignore. If there was one thing in Windows 7 I could remove it would be the meta library directories for Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. They are virtual directories designed to allow home users an easier way to find all similar content in one location, but as it is a virtual location you don't know the real location of anything when navigating within these libraries. Win 7 also has a tendency to open a new Explorer Window in these libraries instead of remembering where you last were. That for me is the most annoying thing. For downloads I instead download everything to the default Windows User/Downloads directory so I know exactly where it is downloading to, and then I move it to its proper destination once downloaded. That is also useful as I keep things like downloaded drivers in there so they are easy to find again later. I also have that directory set to show items in order of date, making it easy to locate the most recent downloads.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


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