One of my favourite utility programs for Windows, Total Commander, released version 6.51 a couple of days ago. Developed by Christian Ghisler in Switzerland, this neat utlity does for Windows what Norton Commander did for MS-DOS, and then some.
There are lots of Norton Commander-like utilities around - see this list, for instance - but for me, Total Commander does the file management job better than most as well as provide additional functions like FTP file transfer, integrated file viewer and much more. I've been using registered versions since version 1.2 about nine years ago. Shareware, free to try and 40 Swiss francs (€28) to buy. See this screenshot (which actually doesn't do the program full justice at all).
Back in the good old MS-DOS days, Norton Commander was one utility program that was absolutely indispensible. I stayed with version 2 for years during the 80s. Here's a great screenshot so you can see what it looks like (it says it's v5.5 but it looks the same as v2).
What this great program did was enable you to manage your file system (at a time when there was no real Windows, just a shell on top of DOS) - you had a command prompt (basically, what you see now when you type 'cmd' in Start > Run in Windows) and had to type instructions at the command line to run programs (one at a time), create directories, copy/delete files, see even hidden files, etc.
Thinking about MS-DOS utlitiies, another one I used in the early 90s was Lotus Magellan 2. What a great program! I still have the original disks and manuals. And I wonder what became of 1-Dir? Made by Borland, I think. I used that at times during the 80s.
But nothing beat the Commander for its simplicity and ease of use.
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