The X-file Suite — Bang It's There

The X-file Suite is part of a strategy to make the best out of a mostly wobbly operating system.

Get It Try It

With XP - and worse with V*STA - now upon us, ordinary file browsing is officially a thing of the past. Using one of the most convoluted paradigms in the history of computer science, Microsoft would have your desktop folder reside both as a subfolder to your login folder and as the grandparent folder of them all - simultaneously - and to accomplish this task they would employ something they call the 'shell namespace', a horrible RAM glutton that slows down everything in your machine and makes you more confused than ever. And as this technology deteriorates even further, we find entire globs of files which suddenly disappear for no apparent reason, in addition to the telltale signs of shell use: dwindling memory, mushed up desktops, and for the processing power available an amazingly sluggish performance.

What do you really have on disk? Do you know? Are you sure? For your Windows explorers will not tell you.

Windows disk architecture is amazingly simple. You have drives and these drives have roots. And the roots have subfolders. And each of the subfolders may have further subfolders. And so on. There's no 'Desktop'. There's no 'Control Panel'. There's no 'Network Neighbourhood'. There are only disks.

When was the last time you saw what you really had on disk? Have you ever had control over it? Nope.

Microsoft don't really want you mucking about where they feel you should not go. Their definition of where you should go (on you own property) and yours are going to differ. Microsoft don't ship a 'file manager' anymore. What are they hiding from you? And why?

But it's more than control and good taste: by studiously avoiding the pitfalls of Microsoft 'technology', the X-file Suite saves your disk space and your RAM, saves your desktop from annihilation, and performs your file operations and folder listings at a blinding speed and with an enviable reliability.

Next »