After The Bang, But Before The Theory

In the Beginning, all was Void. A whirling, clacking, whishing void of tape and card drivien tabulators producing 010101010101(s) and some 101010101010(s), feverishly manned by lab-coated, chain smoking Gollums. From afar, perched high upon Mount Mainframe was a busy Intel, that in a moment of Whimsy (which it soon regretted)  created a processor for the masses, and all Hell broke out. The Void parted into many small, quickly evolving species.

Along came a flood, sweeping away the Altair, Tandy Coco, Atari, Amiga, Sinclair, and a host of their brethren, leaving but two: the IBM platform, and Apple (more or less).

Each had their following, and to this day, co-exist only grudgingly. Of the Apple kind, all that is known is but the most superficial, for superficial is the nature of those that live in such a way. They take what is given them, for it is part of their belief system, that if something better existed, they the "Special Ones" would already have it.

Of the Intel kind; Well, those certainly were a curious bunch. Thus it was that a fellow by the name of Peter Norton, upon investigating the DOS Command Prompt and finding it wanting, conspired with fellow traveler John Szocha and presented to the world the Norton Commander.

Thus Ends The Old World.


Enter The New World

Someone named Bill Gates thought the DOS environment could be better used by the masses if the whole darned thing was managed by a GUI, so he upped and built a software called Windows.And no sooner did Windows become the Way of the World, than a whole sub-industry of utility programming was cranked out, including many, many File Managers - most of them based on the standard set by Norton Commander.

Chief among these for some (including me) was one produced by Mike Kronenberg under the Mijenix banner called Wiz Manager.

When Windows 95 was introduced, Mijenix morphed WizManager into PowerDesk - which exists to this very day.

Here We Are Today

OK, here's the deal: I like PowerDesk. I've owned nearly every retail version since  its inception. I'd like the current version more (v9.01) if it worked well, but it doesn't. There are so many things it is poor at - better to just wave goodbye and move on. We don't beat dead horses - heck, we don't even eat them.

But wait: What else out there looks like and acts like PowerDesk? Frankly, none of them. And for all their many so-called advocates, they really have a litany of issues too.

What to do? Well, it turns out that after much experimentation, and a few tweaks and twists, PowerDesk v5 works amazingly well - on every platform from Windows 95 to Windows 7, both 32bit and 64bit.

So this blog begins. After I've offered up what insights I have, the topics will move on to other File Managers - some new - some old. Andanyrhing else thatstrikes my fancy.