"Beauty is skin deep"

There are two kinds of people in the world, those that like change imposed from the outside and those that find it pointless at best and annoying at worst. Guess which camp I am in? Windows 7 isn't going to be officially released until October but already people are excited with the RC1 released the other day as a free (beta) download. With windows vista being as lousy as it is, people are relieved to see the back of it. There's a lot of buzz about the new windows 7.

Clearly the microsoft spin-meisters are doing a good job for their money, but is there any substance behind the hype? What happened to the annoying UAC and the numerous bugs in vista? The general view is that windows 7 is a step in the right direction (how could it be worse?) and there are in-depth reviews on the subject.

Today I will focus on windows 7 explorer, the desktop file manager. Is it any better than vista's lame explorer? It looks cute and friendly for the average computer novice or granny. In fact it looks almost the same as in vista (don't be fooled by the "7"; the internal windows version is 6.1 which shows how close internally they are). There is still no menu, dual panes or tabs, but there is a useful preview pane on the right and an oversized status bar with extended details on the selection below. The only big difference is the W7 libraries, a way you can reorganize your content regardless where it is stored on disk. That's useful but you could do that already using folder junctions. There are many interesting view modes like stack view and variable size thumbnails. Useful if you

are uploading pictures all day to facebook I suppose. File search is quite quick but like in XP you get partial results.

xplorer² works quite well on vista so it wasn't too hard to move it on to W7. There was just one silly bug with the drivebar, microsoft's fault really, which I have fixed for build 1726. Some people write to me to complain how dated xplorer² looks. Ok it is kind of spartan but it's a tool: "you don't put lace on a chainsaw" as one said. The latest build taps into most of the new W7 features including libraries. It remains to be seen if they have fixed the vista bugs that intermittently crashed xplorer² during drag-drop. If you are using windows 7 here's the updated xplorer² for you to try: Get build 1.7.2.6 32 bit Get build 1.7.2.6 64 bit

In the end of the day nothing much have changed in windows 7. If you want your software cute and fluffy, use windows explorer — or get a Mac <g>; if you need a tool for precision file management use xplorer². Below you'll find a table comparing windows explorer and xplorer² features in detail. Click on symbols for demo videos or further information.

Now will somebody tell me what's the point of renaming "Add or Remove Programs" in control panel so that I have to spend half an hour trying to figure out how to uninstall a program in windows 7? Not a happy camper with all these pointless changes!

Feature Windows 7   explorer xplorer² pro file attributes in detailed view (columns) quick preview pane (audio/video/documents) favorite folders (bookmarks) virtual folders (document collections) dual pane (side by side folders for easy transfers) Folder tabs arrange in groups (adv.) other view modes (tiles, stack) breadcrumbs navigation customized folder views (poor) selection/visibility filter (basic) flat view (folder and subfolders) filename color coding using hyperfilters Folder comparison and synchronization calculate subfolder size customize keyboard, toolbars and commands find duplicates and cleanup to save space keyword search with preview of results search parameters control (location, boolean attributes) file copy control (overwrites, queues, pausing) Advanced file management (mass rename, shred, links/junctions, ADS, touch, split/merge, ...) Enhanced usability and control

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