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Brothers and Sisters,

I do quite a bit with file management, archiving, and you name it. I actually have many thousands of Christian files that I have tried to organize in some logical manner, archive them with compression, and be able to find them easily later. If you do considerable work with files and the file system, you should already know that Windows Explorer is not very friendly or powerful. I've used numerous FREE replacements over the years that were much better, but nothing has been as impressive as FreeCommander.

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

If you simply download ONLY FreeCommander, you will have 100 times the power and ease of use of Windows Explorer. You can configure FreeCommander just about any way that you can dream of, and everything is extremely easy to use. I settled with two dual panes being shown at all times - a tree and directory on both sides of the screen. You can drag and drop files anywhere with either a copy or a move function, and that's just the beginning. You can also drag and drop to compressed files.

You will find FreeCommander reviewed at Snapfiles, Tucows, Softpedia, CNET, and many other trusted places as safe, excellent, FREE, and no strings attached. The only complaints that I've seen is that a few of the commercial file commanders have more bells and whistles and handle more types of files than Free Commander. The author of FreeCommander has recently made it compatible "Universal Viewer" and a ton of other completely free and excellent file handlers that can be used as plug-ins for FreeCommander. There are links on the FreeCommander site for just about every kind of FREE file handler you can think of (i.e. graphics, spreadsheet, database, etc.). It's also completely compatible with Windows file associations, so you can automatically open and use files that you already have programs to run.

One of the best things that I like about FreeCommander is the ability to make it look and work countless numbers of ways. As a few examples:  fonts, font sizes, font colors, background colors, and a huge list of functions are configurable in countless ways. The power and versatility of FreeCommander is a 100 times better than Windows Explorer, and that's without using any of the hundreds of free plug-ins available for it. I did try some of the free plug-ins, but I decided that I really didn't need them. They do all kinds of things that I didn't know could be done, but I have no need for the hundreds of extra functions. So, I configured FreeCommander simple, pretty, and exactly the way I want it.

I'll just bluntly state that FreeCommander is the best file handler shell out there, free or commercial. This is obviously just my opinion. It's also a small program that doesn't hog system resources. If you have needs that the base program can't handle, Windows Explorer can't handle it either. BUT, remember I said that hundreds of free plug-ins are available for FreeCommander. The free "Universal Viewer" is probably one of the best ones:

http://atorg.net.ru/universal_viewer/index.htm

Universal Viewer has been around for a long time and does many things that Windows Explorer can't do. It also has tons of available add-ons and configurations for just about everything you can think of - all FREE. The bottom line is that Universal Viewer listed as an external editor for FreeCommander makes FreeCommander one of the best and most powerful file shells in existence - all FREE. Please try FreeCommander by itself first because many people won't need the hundreds of additional functions of Universal Viewer. I now use FreeCommander exclusively and by itself. I did some trials with Shareware programs costing over $60 that I don't like nearly as well as FreeCommander. TRY IT and you'll quickly forget about using Windows Explorer for anything.

I hope this is better than xplorer2, but hey, you always pick best stuffs(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/Pizza_Al/emotions/bingo.gif)

It is much better than Xplorer2. I've also tried that one. Free Commander is much more stable, and you have many more choices for various kinds of layouts for file windows. You can also customize the menus exactly the way that you want them. You can even set several different file layouts and switch between them for various functions. You really have the power to change just about everything, so you should easily be able to set things to your liking.

My favorite setup is dual windows and dual file trees because of the excellent drag and drop functions in Free Commander. You can do the same thing from and to compressed files with either a move or copy function. I used it to manage a very large library of various Christian materials, and I was very happy with it.

Love In Christ,
Tom