'Windows Explorer' Replacement

[Prelude76]

I do agree with you very much on your point about American cars that are hardly American anymore...but does that make it right to buy a totally foreign car? It all boils down to: when you buy a foreign car, you are hurting your country...when you buy an American car, you are helping it...Maybe its not as cut and dry as that, but thats the basic principle.

um, its really not that "cut & dry".i live in Canada. We have a huge Honda plant half hour away. most of the business I do (tool & die) is for Honda plant, but some are for GM plant about 2 hours away. Honda decided to expand the plant a lot. I now have unlimited overtime all that i want coz we are so busy making dies for Honda parts. GM on the other hand is winding down their divisions. I got layed off when we relied on GM parts 90% of time and GM turned around and outsources most of die work to Spain due to Spanish government subsidies. And the GM plant is winding down and more and more dies are shipped to Mexico.so, Honda = Helps my local economy, and gives me overtimeGM = cause lay offs in my field, and are slowly moving to mexicoI know i'm Canadian and i'm considered 'foreign' to some Yanks but if i were to believe the "support your local guys", then i have no choice but to support Honda which is helping me pay my mortgage and giving my area a great economic boom.P.s. it can be applied to Honda and Toyota plants across US too. more and more foreign plants are opening in US to avoid possible US tarrifs, yet more and more domestic Big Three plants are migrating to cheaper nations so they can competer financially. makes no sense, does it? p.p.s. - Randombox, Bhudda saw you did try to re-steer the thread. I have lost Karma by re-hijacking the thread, but i'll stop now.

[Prelude76]

oh, and just to be a bugger about it, i see a HUGE difference at the fine detail end of each car part, when its a GM or Honda part. GM lets 3mm variations slide, no hassles. With Honda parts, even on insignificant brackets, they bust our butt until we get less than 1mm variations! And most of the parts are actually quite complex, they try to bend and twist parts all sorts of crazy ways. GMs approach in many similar cases is to make several easy-to-build parts, and have them welded together. when i see changes in GM at the tool & die detail level, only then will i consider buying an American car.

[cybernut]

If you ever had Norton Commander, it had a FileManager that was hard to beat. NC is not much use under XP, but I "extracted" FM and still use it in preference to any other.

I too really liked Norton Commander. Used it for years. When I saw Servant Salamander, I downloaded it at once, since it reminded me a LOT of NC. If you haven't tried it out, follow the links that LilBambi supplied in her message.Actually, I have to confess that I stopped using Servant Salamander. To my surprise, I had gotten so used to using Explorer that I couldn't break myself of the habit. But it's definitely worth giving Servant Salamander a try.Cybernut

[Cluttermagnet]

Er- ah- I've been using an ancient copy of Drag and File 3.51 that I first learned on in my Win 95 computer. Since I learned on it, I have always liked it better than Windows Explorer. In some cases Explorer does certain tasks better, but there are only a few such instances. And of course a lot of folks write all sorts of spiffy add-ons for Explorer such as Send To Any Folder and other such niceties. OTOH, D&F does quite a few things better than Explorer. D&F has a few quirks but I like it just the same. I have tried a number of other free utilities, many of them pretty impressive, but have still kept my bias for D&F. I tried Power Desk and 2XExplorer and Commander Salamander and ZTree and probably a half dozen or more others. All interesiting, all impressive, but to date nothing has displaced D&F, vintage 1995 or so, in my day to day file management. Maybe I should have just given them a longer trial. Maybe D&F is to me like Linus's grubby old blanket in the Peanuts comics. OK, I admit it, I don't do a lot of really massive file renames or file moves and that sort of thing. Just sort of light duty stuff, a few files at a time. I think I will revisit several of the utilities mentioned in this thread and just run through them again and try to see what I missed on my first pass through.It is also slightly embarassing to me that one of the cars that I drive is an 18 year old, full-size, American (GM) station wagon. I love that car. It has a real frame- none of this 'unibody' all-spot-welded tinny steel go cart junk that starts to fall apart once the rust sets in (in about 10 years). I like my chances a lot better if I ever end up in a crash with any of that current crop of lightweights. I'm a lot more attentive when around the current crop of super-sized SUV's. Top heavy and built like tanks. Might be an even match for my barge. My curb weight is somewhere near two tons before you load her up. Mine rides just beautifully, smooth but still enough road feel for good control. Those little cars jar you around a bit much at times, especially the lower end ones. A sports car mine is not, but it sure gets the job done and has been quite inexpensive to maintain and almost trouble free. Only 14-16 mpg but I have to haul a lot of heavy stuff around- not an issue to me. It has a substantial V8 and it can get up and go when I kick in all 4 barrels. Nobody else ever made these lovable old barges because gasoline was so expensive everywhere else. Now that the American manufacturers are trying to compete directly with the Hondas and Toyotas and all the slick little German cars, it is a lot tougher. I think they got fairly close for a time, but then they gave up on it and just settled for being second best. Having driven a few recent American cars in addition to the standard Hondas and Toyotas, I must regretfully agree that my money is with the imports. I have felt this way for at least the past 10 years. The comments about tighter manufacturing tolerances and outsourcing come as little surprise to me.I don't like the current crop of aerodynamic, wierded-out body shapes. Ugh! Spare me. Give me big old Cadillac barges, or those 60's Ford Galaxies that looked like they were just made from stacks of bricks and were totally square like their owners! The only things that were round on them was the steering wheel and the tires. Those old Fords were so un-aerodynamic that they would start rolling backwards on a level surface, just on general principles. You had to stand on the brakes or give them a little gas just to hold them in place. But they were so heavy the wind couldn't blow them off the road, anyway. This has been a great dual thread. We ought to give an award at the end of the year for the most creative dual thread- like, say, "Higher performance hardware platforms and the geeks who drive them" or "Incredible major geeks of the internet and the women who somehow put up with them (yeah-like they have had a date any time in the last 10 years)." Bonus points for: originality, humor, and best balanced presentation.

[RandomBox]

Always leave to cluttermagnet to bring a breath of fresh air to any topic that he decides to participate in!I think at the end of the year, you should get a meritorious award as well! I want an award for being able to use an exclamation point after any/every sentence!

[Cluttermagnet]

Always leave to cluttermagnet to bring a breath of fresh air to any topic that he decides to participate in!I think at the end of the year, you should get a meritorious award as well! I want an award for being able to use an exclamation point after any/every sentence!

Demerits for exclamation points? I shall have to watch my step. Looks like I only used two in three paragraphs. I love you too, Random. ;)Let's have your reaction to this exclamatory posting.

Why not find and install a FREEware PDF reader program instead of the Adobe version?Don't let Adobe tick you off so much >> they really mean well!Do you have similar problems (with PDFs) when you use MozillaFireBird???WHAT? Did I just hear you say you don't use MozFB?Now I am ticked off too >> but I know you meant well!

(snicker, snarf, chortle)

[RandomBox]

Here is a great reason for wanting to use an alternate program for Windows Explorer!My Outlook2002 crashed and attempted to report the crash to microsoft! I wanted to see what the nature of the error was and wanted to review the Dr.Watson created error report! It told me that the error report was under:DataFiles=C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini100703-01.dmp|C:\Documents and Settings\ThisUser\Local Settings\Temp\WER26.tmp.dir00 (ErrorSubPath=blue)The name of the file was "sysdata.xml", when I went to WindowsExplorer and did a search for this exact file name, under the specific HDD, it told me that "no such file was found"! Then I drilled through the folders to this specific folder and did another search for the "sysdata.xml". It still told me that "no such file was found"! GRRRRRRRR! I launched PowerDeskPro and schzaaam >> the file was found instantly! Now who was saying that there is nothing wrong with WindowsExplorer! I have mine set up so that it does not hide ANY files from me but still I get no hit! GRRRRRRRRRRR!You be the judge!