File manager

[bononos]

I went and tested a number of free file managers and found that Free Commander had the best features. Master commander (and a few others) came in a close 2nd.

Features that I needed over standard explorer-
- better search by type/extension/wildcards/regexp and inside text files
- compare directories
- display folder size
- multi-file rename
- show checksum
- split/merge (not too important)
- enhanced file handling (bonus)

Free commander a very good folder compare plus all the above minus custom file handling since it used standard windows routines but you modify the config to use teracopy. Also the search doesn't have regexp

Master commander looks better, has its own custom file handling but slighly poorer compare and doesn't show the checksum but only outputs them to a file.
Multi commander doesn't seem to have directory compare/sync but it has a very good tweaker for file operations handling.

q-dir, xplorer2, xplorer++ free versions just didn't have the functionality I needed.

Also it turns out that the Free commander XE beta version is availble and I was looking at the 200902b version.

 

[taq8ojh]

Hm, ok.
I've been using Total Commander for years and love it.

 

[jkauff]

You can't beat Total Commander. I've been using it since it was Windows Commander (my serial number is 289), and it's always been rock solid, even the betas. IMO, trusting your file manager is of primary importance. It has all the features you're looking for, and many more. File transfer speeds are especially good, much faster than Explorer (although that may have changed with Win 8). It's not free, but it's reasonably priced and upgrades have always been free.

 

[taq8ojh]

I wasn't considering any other options even when there was no 64bit version of TC, but since then it's absolutely unbeatable. I didn't buy it yet, but I will, eventually.