If you're looking for a simple, fast, portable file management application to run instead of Windows Explorer, you might want to take Snowbird for a spin.

It's less than half a meg in size and includes some features that aren't included in Windows by default. Snowbird's main window is split between a tree view on the left and folder view on the right. Like Vista, breadcrumbs appear as you navigate but there's also an up button - an omission from Vista's Explorer interface that tends to irk some people.

Snowbird also maintains a list of recently visited locations and allows you to bookmark local and networked folders. The integrated search performs well, displaying results in a popup window. Memory usage is very light, and it ran without issue on my Vista Ultimate x64 install.

Overall, there's not a ton of functionality in Snowbird, but it's certainly good enough to serve as a replacement for the Windows default.

The author's site is hosted by GeoCities, so you may want to head to the via link at Freeware Files to download it.

[ via Freeware Files ]