We've covered many, many Explorer replacements here in the past, so I was a little surprised that MuCommander hadn't been written up yet.

What makes MuCommander stand out is that it is free, open source, and cross-platform. The author's web site provides downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux (.tar.gz) as well as a Debian package, portable version, and a Java Web Start package.

It's actually the first JWS application I've come across since I started reviewing for Download Squad. It loaded fairly quickly on my netbook, and ridiculously fast on my quad-core AMD desktop.

MuCommander presents a skinnable, dual-pane view for file management. There's no tab support, though I don't consider that a major shortcoming - especially considering its other features are numerous, and extremely useful.

For starters, there's built-in support for FTP, SFTP, Samba, HTTP, NFS, and Bonjour. Several types of archives can be explored without extracting: zip, rar, tar, gzip, bzip2, iso, nrg, deb, and lst. MuCommander can create archives (press ctrl+I to pack) and even modify zip files on the fly without having to recompress the entire archive

There's also a command shell window with scrolling output, credential manager, and favorite locations list.

MuCommander is a fantastic file manager, and well worth a test drive for any user - regardless of OS.

If you're like us, your hard drive is anything but tidy. That's because us power users can't be bothered to keep things organized - there are just too many awesome things out there to download, extract, and forget about because half of them turn out to be garbage.

FlexTK for Windows helps make short work of cleaning up after yourself, offering a full complement of file management tools in one handy package. Folder sync, duplicate file search, temp file cleanup, storage utilization, search, and an advanced organization module are all included. Navigation is handled beautifully in an explorer-like manner, tweaked by the addition of breadcrumbs and a "bookmarks" pane that allows you to quickly link your favorite locations.

What's one of the worst things about Windows? The explorer function to find folders, documents, and pictures of your cat doing funny things.

NexusFile aims to replace Windows Explorer.

Here are some of the cool features that NexusFile sports that the Windows team left out on Explorer:

• Favorite Folders
  
• Tab support - This is a big productivity one
• Smart bar that remembers the directories that you were in
• Archive function built in (zip, rar ace, with password support)
• Disk cleanup tool
• Built in FTP client

But the best feature here is the commenting tool. Comment on a file or a folder for later reference. That is sheer genius!

If you're moving files from one directory to another a lot, then this is worth a shot.

[via online-tech-tips]

File copying between computers or even folders on a local system can sometimes be a bit of a pain. File sizes seem to be getting bigger, and the number of files we want to be moving around seems to be growing as well.

One way to manage your file copies and moves is to install a tight little utility called TeraCopy. When installed, TeraCopy integrates into Windows Explorer and by default handles all file copies and moves, however this can be changed via the Menu button.

TeraCopy also offers a context-menu option when right-clicking on a file or group of files that you'd like to move or copy. Choosing the Teracopy context menu option brings the file into the TeraCopy interface, showing the complete path to the file(s) you are working with. You then have the option of pressing the Copy or Move button, choosing a destination and letting 'er rip.

Since one of TeraCopy's claims to fame includes the ability to retry copying a troublesome file a number of times, there is also a Test button in the interface that allows you to test your files to ensure they are complete and healthy.

TeraCopy is a free (for home use) Windows download. A Pro version is also available for $19.95 which offers the abilities to select files with the same extension/same folder, remove selected files from the copy queue, and get free updates and priority support.

Could this online office suite steal people away from the popular Google and Zoho? It seems far from likely that Peepel will ever take market share away from the online office application space. However, they might look a little amateur, but a lot of development work has gong under the Peepel hood, showing how serious people are indeed trying to get into this space.

Peepel has just announced their beta release for their online office suite of products that are currently not running head to head with Google, Zoho and Thinkfree. Peepel's suite includes a spreadsheet, calculator, word processor, help system, and a file manager. The Peepel workspace manager is a feature that saves the desktop as you have left it, and will open with everything where you were when you login the next time. A Task manager lives on the screen and shows everything that is open and active. In Peepel, users can have many different applications and files open at once, all overlapping in resizable windows. The big claim to fame by Peepel is the claim that they are the only competitor offering a true multiple window system in an online desktop, and not just a bunch of stacked popups. Some neat features, but nothing out of the ordinary that is going to make users want to switch.

Aside from the fact that there is currently no importing or sharing files, as well as limited storage sizes, Peepel does have a very welcome offline work mode. It's not up to standards with their competition, but if they are serious about success, they do have potential to grab a tiny share of the market space. We will hold off on storing any major files here yet, but our radar will be following Peepel's further development.

I've tried a number of Windows Explorer replacements, and while I always seem to migrate back to using it, I can't help but think there's a better option out there somewhere. The latest in my list of trials has been with a program called A43 File Management Utility.

I'm sort of on the fence about this one; it has a number of features that are missing from Windows Explorer, but some of them feel like they've only been half implemented. For example, clicking on an image file while the image viewing pane is open does not automatically load the image to see; you need to drag the file into the viewer for it to show up. On the other hand, A43's built in handling of zip and rar compressed files is seamless and extremely easy to use. It's also a very fast file manager, in that it has stripped out all the eye-candy that XP turns on by default, and loads folders very quickly. This speediness is offset by the occasional short lock-up. I haven't yet determined the cause of these lockups, but it could certainly be due to some other software utility running on my system; I test a lot of software, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyhow, A43 falls firmly into the maybe category for me. Being that it's small and fast, I'm inclined to leave it sitting on my desktop and give it a try every so often to see if it grows on me.

Anybody who has ever bought web hosting knows that web-based file management is severely deficient. I myself almost always give up and just fire up WinSCP. But hope is on the horizon: Relay is a very slick PHP-based directory manager that uses Ajax to streamline file management tasks.  It features expanding/collapsing folders, drag-and-drop for moving files, a nice File Information block that, among other things, displays a thumbnail if you select an image, and a progress bar for uploads. My favorite feature, though, is the "Download Cart," which you can drop several files into and then download them all in a .zip file or get them e-mailed to you. One thing that seems to be missing, though, is the ability to select multiple files at once. Relay requires a server with PHP 4+, MySQL 4+, Apache 2.0, and Perl 5.8.0 (for upload progress). It's open source and free to download, but you can try out a live demo at the Relay web site.