...... XTREE Gold!! Hello?

What was wrong with Win 3.1 File manager? People said that it didn't do much. No kidding! It was a file manager. What did anybody expect? To see it move around the screen like the Windows screensaver clock? I could never quite work out why it was not liked. File Manager stored files, listed files, copied files, moved files, showed file size. It managed files. Explorer took over from File manager and lived on way past Xtree Gold, the Windows version summarily buried by Symantec in 1995.

Apart from the functions already mentioned with regard to Win 3.1 File manager, what else would anybody want to do with files? It seems to me that some people spent countless hours just trolling through lists of files, doing who knows what with them. Maybe a lack of applications was responsible. Let's face it, Windows Calculator or Address Book are just plain dull, but can they be any duller than a file manager?

Years later, and people are still complainng about Windows File Manager, in particular Vista's Windows Explorer. It stores files, lists files, copies files, moves files, shows file size, and can show a great deal more. It manages files. There are four different layouts and seven different views available. It will show thumbnails, general document previews, and play music in a small player which saves having to open the 'big' one. Its appearance is quite unlike any Microsoft file management program preceeding it, but no more different than any version of Xtree Gold ever was when compared to MS file managers of the day.

What was it about non-MS file managers that made them so much fun that some spent half their computing lives looking at and manipulating files? If some can't get used to Vista Windows Explorer, do these same people really believe that swapping to Linux or MacOS is going to be any easier?

We want change, we want change, we want change!! Aaaarrrggghhhhh, somebody changed everything!! Where do we get Ubuntu?