Total Commander (aka Windows Commander)
is the ultimate file manager for Windows (and recently for Android
too).
Who can use it?
The regular Windows user that used all
his life Windows Explorer will find Total Commander interface AT
LEAST awkward. The interface concept and user experience is totally
different in Total Commander. This doesn’t mean that Total
Commander is bad or poorly design or difficult to learn. It is just
different than Windows Explorer.
The regular user will require a day or
two to accommodate with the concept ( experienced users will have no
problem to gasp the new concept) but the efficiency improvement
totally worth it. I am a Total Commander use since 1998 and I never
ever (literally) used Windows Explorer again.
The concept
Total Commander solves an old design
flaw of Windows Explorer. So old that regular computer user won’t
even observe it anymore.
Many operations that you perform on
files involve copying or moving files from one place (folder) to
another. This is where Windows Explorer design fails: you work on two
folders, the folder from where you copy the file (source) and the
folder where you copy the file (destination), but Windows Explorer
has one single panel. The Microsoft solution is to browse and open
both folders and carefully drag and drop the files from source
to destination. I say carefully because it is easy to ‘un-carefully’
drop the files in the wrong folder. Obviously there are also other
methods but they are even more time consuming than this one. And when
you close the Explorer all that work invested into locating your
folders is gone. You have to start all over.
For a person that performs 1-2 file
operations per day it is not a big deal, but for an intermediate user
or a POWER user this is time consuming and error prone.
And, here is the time and place where
you install Total Commander. Total Commander brings the concept of
two parallel panels: it always shows on screen the source folder AND
the destination folder. Now all you have to do is to drag and drop
the files from one pane to the other (advanced users can user F5 and
F6 keys for copy/paste).
Total Commander will remember the last
used folders and ALSO the recent folders you navigated through. So,
if you worked on a folder few hours ago and you want to return to
that folder, you don’t have to browse the entire folder structure
to locate it again. Using the History (Alt+DownArrow) you are back
there with just one click.
The magic never stops
Total Commander has literary hundreds
of features that are not present in Windows Explorer: FTP,
compression support, fully customizable toolbar (that totally
replaces the Start menu), CRC control, Mime encoding, advanced multi
rename tool, advanced search tool, support for plugins (there are
also thousands of plugins for Total Commander), thumbnail view, quick
view, color coded file types, etc, etc, etc.
One of the useful functions we will investigate now is the File
Queue. With this function you can Queue a long list of file
operations for later execution and….
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Total Commander, except my affection for it :)
