Spotlight On . . . Total Commander 7

Total Commander has been my file manager of choice for about five years. In that time it has evolved from a comparatively simple file utility into an all purpose file access, file management, archiving and file handling tool complete with fully customizable menus and toolbars. Version 7 is just about out the door with Release Candidate 1 appearing at the end of March 2007. If you manage a lot of files on a weekly basis, dual-pane file managers are probably familiar to you already, so learning to use Total Commander effectively should be quite easy. My first goal while reviewing v7 was to determine Windows Vista compatibility and I didn't find any problems at all. A couple of general file manipulation functions are slower than they should be, but that's attributable to some test or beta code that's probably still hanging around in the release candidate. Total Commander v7 received a much-needed face lift including new graphics and window treatment. It looks much better than previous versions. File browsing, copying, moving, renaming, splitting, encoding, decoding, archiving, sorting, space calculations, drive mapping, built-in FTP, back ups and directory updates all work swiftly and smoothly. File synchronization between folders located anywhere on a network or local drives works extremely well. Because of the number of files I handle daily, my workflow includes Total Commander set up to launch with Windows. Developer C. Ghisler & Co., has done a good job of keeping Total Commander small, efficient and powerful. Total Commander v7 does not have a robust file viewer—you can look at text files only. That's a minor gripe which is completely offset by Total Commander v7's excellent performance in all other areas of file management. 4 out of 5 stars