Windows 7 Explorer alternative

[Char Jackson]

Myself I use Directory Opus (http://www.gpsoft.com.au/)
which can be configured to replace Windows Explorer if one desires.
It's not free, but it is an awesome program.

I used to use and love Directory Opus on the Amiga back in the late
80's and early 90's. Since I loved it on the Amiga I thought I'd love
it on a PC, but not so much. I'm glad to hear it's still around.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

The "hassle" you refer to is two mouse clicks. I can manage that, the
struggle to click twice sometimes overwhelms me but not often....

I know "on paper" it's only two mouse clicks but I've used Win
Explorer as well as PowerDesk for around a decade and having two
completely separate WExplore "windows" compared to the dual/quad pane
in the single program window just works so much easier IMHO. Doesn't
seem like it would make much difference but.....

 

[Roy Smith]

I used to use and love Directory Opus on the Amiga back in the late
80's and early 90's. Since I loved it on the Amiga I thought I'd love
it on a PC, but not so much. I'm glad to hear it's still around.

I used SID on my Amiga 2000HD around that same time frame. Also ran a
BBS using DLG BBS software, and ti think that at the time I thought I
had a large drive that was a whopping 105 MB....

So have you looked at Dopus lately?


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Professional
Thunderbird 3.1.7
Thursday, January 27, 2011 9:59:21 PM

 

[Char Jackson]

I used SID on my Amiga 2000HD around that same time frame. Also ran a
BBS using DLG BBS software, and ti think that at the time I thought I
had a large drive that was a whopping 105 MB....

No BBS for me, but I ran mail-only nodes in Fidonet and Amiganet
(Aminet?) for a few years, I think from 1989 to 1995. Good times. I
started with the A500 and the GVP500 hard drive (52MB) from Great
Valley Products, later upgrading to an A4000 and a 540 MB drive
(bought used for $500), followed by a whopping 850 MB drive that I
asked the local shop owner to special order for me. I still remember
him telling me I was crazy to waste my money spinning platters that
big.

So have you looked at Dopus lately?

It's been perhaps 5 years. I'm taking another look now.

 

[Zanqeutil]

Ken Blake schreef:

I liked PowerDesk too, but these days I prefer xplorer2, which is also
not free.

See http://zabkat.com/

Hi Ken,

Zabkat also offers a free version, it's called Xplore2 Lite.
http://www.zabkat.com/x2lite.htm

There even is a bit older (1.7.5.0) portable version available:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTAB...ications-xplorer2-lite-edition-portable.shtml

Regards,

Zanqeutil

 

[Flint]

I used to use and love Directory Opus on the Amiga back in the late
80's and early 90's. Since I loved it on the Amiga I thought I'd love
it on a PC, but not so much. I'm glad to hear it's still around.

I used to use DirOpus on the Amiga too. I used to use Diskmaster
before that. Back just before AmigaOS Release 2, I used to use
Diskmaster and MenuMaster(our own user configurable menu software),
and rarely used Workbench.

 

[Char Jackson]

I used to use DirOpus on the Amiga too. I used to use Diskmaster
before that. Back just before AmigaOS Release 2, I used to use
Diskmaster and MenuMaster(our own user configurable menu software),
and rarely used Workbench.

Like you, I used Diskmaster before I used DirOpus, but MenuMaster is
new to me.

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Sorry to be critical, but I don't think that Cubic Explorer's "Gold" or
"Hacker BW" are themes I could look at for long, let alone work with!

Moving off topic, in its day WP5.1 was the best Word Processor by far
(and still a lot more user-friendly than any Windows word processor). I
still long for the day when OO3 (4, 5, 6..?) has something as essential
as "Reveal codes". Word XP's "Reveal formatting" had something part of
the way there, but it didn't go far enough. Is it still there in the
latest version of Word?

Hi Jeff,

If we're going to head down memory-lane, then I have to disagree. For
years WordStar was the GOLD standard for word processors. Originally
written for CP/M then ported over to run under MS/PC-DOS then moved up
to Windows.

It's funny, my favorite version of WordStar (when still owned by
MicroPro) v3.2 fit on a 360KB disk with 50KB of space for datafiles. If
you wanted to have your grammar checked, Grammatick (can't remember the
publisher at the moment) fit on a single floppy in your other floppy drive.

WordStar was fast, it always wrote your file (when disk space allowed)
before it erased the current temp file or "over-wrote" the existing file.

Then . . . if you want very small cross platform, there was Charles
Brannon's Kwik-Writer (originally written for the Commodore VIC-20) and
ported to every major home PC platform of that time other than the
Sinclair 1000.

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

 

[Lewis]

Hi Jeff,

If we're going to head down memory-lane, then I have to disagree. For
years WordStar was the GOLD standard for word processors. Originally
written for CP/M then ported over to run under MS/PC-DOS then moved up
to Windows.

I ran wordstar on an Apple ][+, and yes, it was great at the time. Then
I learned about vi and never looked at wordstar again.

But the best overall word processors would be a tie between Word 5.1 on
the mac and Word Perfect 3 (also on the Mac). there might be better ones
now, but Word certainly isn't any better. I don't do word processing
anymore, everything is in plain text. If I need formatting and pretty
documents, I use LaTeX.

 

[Flint]

Like you, I used Diskmaster before I used DirOpus, but MenuMaster is
new to me.

MenuMaster was a script configurable drop down menu (or a set of drop
down menus) that allow users to launch any Amiga program from it, as
well as AmigaDOS scripts, CLI/Shell with user defined hot-keys. It was
a precursor of much like Windows desktop toolbar.

The initial version was written in SAS C, then later rewritten in 68K
asm. A companion utility called "MenuEd" was also being developed by
us to provide users a way to add menu items to MenuMaster's
configuration via a drag-n-drop config window by dragging icons to it,
and clicking to select hot keys/qualifier keys. A later version of
MenuMaster was nearly completed that also displayed a menu list
program's '.info' icon file as a small thumbnail beside each entered
program displayed in the user config'd menu.

The program was very configurable/dynamically reconfigurable. My own
MenuMaster config contained something like 20 menus across the
MenuMaster with 10-20 menu items/5-20 sub-menu items.

The program also displayed a small draggable Workbench window (or a
titlebar width window) which itself displayed the system date/time,
and the Amiga's Chip/Fast/Free RAM.

Development got dropped as real world concerns took over for my
partner and I, and development was turned over to someone else.
Haven't used it 20 years, and don't have the original source code any
longer and have no idea if it exists on some Fred Fish disk somewhere
or not. I know the code was placed in the public domain, however.

 

[Flint]

No BBS for me, but I ran mail-only nodes in Fidonet and Amiganet
(Aminet?) for a few years, I think from 1989 to 1995. Good times. I
started with the A500 and the GVP500 hard drive (52MB) from Great
Valley Products,

I had one of those too on my A500. I loved it, but I kept hitting the
'bat-handle' toggle switch on it w/my left hand as I was typing, and
occasionally would kill the power to my hard disk. ;-)

I also had one of their early ZORRO-II SCSI controller cards which was
designed to fasten a 3.5" vertically onto the card itself. The way
they designed it however, the HD (a Quantum, Micropolis,or Conner
drive, I forget) kept overheating and turning one of the drive's SCSI
firmware chips into _popcorn_. I finally mounted the drive on hex
standoff posts, and the problem was solved.

At the time, I also had one of the Rev 6 motherboards in my 2000 that
had the noisy bus lines that required a hardware hack in order to
clean up the timing problems that resulted from Commodore's German
design team placing the clocks lines too close to system data lines
thus causing Amiga 2000s w/installed ZORRO cards, particularly DMA
HD controllers.

Being that GVP was only an hour down the road from me, I was able to
take my system down to them on occasion for them to test. I left it
with them for a few days, and they discovered the cause of the data
corruption and took my system across town to Commodore HQ at West
Chester (QVC now owns and operates out of the building, BTW.) and
*showwed* them a scope readout after which Commodore finally admitted
the problem.