Hi Bat

Replying to a message of Bat Lang to John Thompson:

 BL> As a registered user of OS2C (OS/2 Commander), with which I was happy
 BL> until the author became incommunicado about a year ago. I am still
 BL> quite happy with it, but would like it a whole lot more if there was
 BL> an author taking an active interest in furthering its
 BL> usefulness/features. It is a text mode twin window display (similar
 BL> to QFiler, my DOS preference).

I've been a long term user of InspectA (I was one of the original beta
testers). While it still does some things better than any other file manager
I've used, I finally got sick of its bugs (after it destroyed the file
descriptions in a large file area...).

Anyhow, I've just completed an extensive review of OS/2 file managers. The
results will be on my Web site within the next couple of weeks (just being
proof-read and having graphics added).

OS/2 Commander was one of the programs that I tried. I liked it a good deal,
but found a number of annoying bugs (failure handing files with long filenames 
and FILES.BBS entries, failure to read most self-extracting archives, odd
behaviour after viewing files within archives, etc..). Having got no replies
at all from the author, I wasn't prepared to register it.

I looked at a number of other options as well. Including MC. While MC is very
like OS/2 commander (text-mode, exteneded Norton Commander clone), its fairly
painful to set up (and the docs aren't real clear on what has to be done
either..). The fact that its free helps, but not enough...

 BL> If you could please supply a few specifics about MC (I am not into
 BL> _ix). Is it PM or Text mode? Do you have any comparison basis with
 BL> other similar clones? Thanks for any response, and Good Modeming! 
 BL> /\oo/\

If I ever get MC set up completely, I may be able to compare it. For the
moment, the amount of work involved in getting it to do what I want has put me 
off.

Other programs that I looked at:

FileFreedom - PM, now free, but a bit limited, and not an NC clone

Ztree - text mode, but I always hated Xtree, so I'm not real taken with Ztree.

EFCommander - PM, NC clone, broken in a number of respects and goes _way_ 
beyond being simply annoyware - its a _real_ turkey.

Larsen Commander - PM, NC clone, nice, but still beta, no price yet.

FC/2 - text mode, NC clone, _very_ few bugs, still under active development,
also has a Win9x version should you need it. A bit cheaper to register than
OS/2 Commander. Commander has a few things I need, but without bug fixes, I'm
not prepared to spend any money on it. 

So far, my vote is overwhelmingly for FC/2. Current version is FC2_211.ZIP,
should be available in lots of places. Home is: 

http://silk.apana.org.au/pub/fc2/index.html

There is also an active mailing list (well, reasonably active...). Registraion 
via BMT Micro.

Hopefully the full review should be on the web site wihin the next couple of
weeeks (depends when the proof-readers get through with it). So you should be
able to find it shortly at:

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~paulm/os2sig

regards, paul

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