| FAR |
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 A great file manager, very similar to old good Norton Commander. It supports plug-ins and has an excellent built-in FTP client. Lots of plug-ins written by third parties are available.
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| 2xExplorer |
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 If you prefer Windows interface, here is an improved Windows Explorer that actually has more features of NC: two panels, the same hot keys. The user can make bookmarks and many other things. I would strongly recommend it. I believe that this software is better than FAR and Total Commander in some respects, let alone poor Windows Explorer. I, for one, never use the latter and gradually gave up FAR in favor of 2xExplorer. And I always find some new interesting features, hot keys, etc
Features:
- absolutely free software, no ads, no regustration
- very small (actually, just an EXE file of half megabyte that can be compressed in half by UPX
- no installation
- full GUI supporting all the features of Windows Explorer such as drag&drop, cut&paste, etc.
- lots of hot keys for all operations; and hot keys can be assigned to frequently used folders
- handy and quick built-in editor/viewer that is called by F3/F4 (of course)
- reads folders quicker than Windows Explorer, especially ZIP Folders; when you go up, the folder that you were in is selected (unlike Windows Explorer where the first folder in the parent one is selected)
- quick preview of BMP and HTML files
- there are three layouts, for example the one with one panel, the one with two panels, the one with preview. You can switch between layouts using Ctrl+7, 8, 9 and customize them
- when sorting by the file type it creates no mess because it sorts by the extension actually
- has very few if any bugs
The manual is a must.
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| Power Desk |
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Handy two panel file shell with extended features including archive support.
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| EF Commander |
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Less advanced shell, looks like Total Commander.
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| Folder Size |
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Adds a new tab to folder properties where you can see a tree of subfolders and their size.
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| SendTo |
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Adds a new item to the Explorer shell menu Send To: Any Folder. When you chose it, you get a small window where you can pick up a destination which can be any folder.
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| MS PowerToys Send To X |
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A similar gadget from Microsoft. There are unique features, for example send the file contents to the Clipboard.
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| Path Copy |
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If you have ever had to copy a full file path icluding the file name to the Clipboard, it must have been hard. There is special software that lets you do it in one click. Hold on Shift to get the path in quotation marks.
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| Path to Clipboard |
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Similar software.
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| Describer |
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This program allows you to add a description to any file. The description will be shown on the left in the folder when the file is selected. You only have to enable Webpage view for all folders. Unfortunately, it does not work in Windows XP but does in W2K. This is what it will look like:
You see, it is possible to add hypertext tags into the description. |
| Annotsx |
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Similar program. The big difference is the description is bound to the full file path rather than to the file name. And it is not shown in Webpage view. You only see it in a special tab in the file properties window.
The descriptions are stored in the annotsx.odb located in the Windows directory, so it is recommnded to back it up. Otherwise all descriptions will be lost after you reinstall Windows
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| File Informer |
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This shell extension adds extended information to the tooltip for executable, graphic and sound files. You can quickly view all ID tags for your MP3 files (if you cared to fill them in).
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| MP3Ext |
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And this is where you can easily edit those ID tags. This extension adds a new tab to file properties for MP3 files.
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| SHDate |
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Similarly to Folder Size there is a new tab in file properties where you can edit the dates of the file (created, modified).
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| Split File |
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This software adds an item to the Explorer shell context menu that allows splitting of large files so as to fit a big file into a few floppies.
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| Iron Key |
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A new shell context menu item. When you chose it, the selected file is encrypted. As a result, you get an exe file. To unscramble it, run it and enter the password. No other software needed.
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