I don't know what to expect from Windows Vista's file explorer, but until we get that in our hands, I must say that I am one of those who would rather use the command line than crawling through the Windows Explorer. On the other hand, I know there are a lot of people happy with it or just too lazy to accept a change into better. Anyway, I don't see myself becoming a Windows Vista user anytime soon or using the Windows Explorer to browse my files, and today I have a program that should ease some people's lives.

The Windows Explorer is easy to use and a really basic tool, without any advanced features that require reading a 200 pages manual to understand what they're all about and then decide you don't need them, but these two good parts bring also some weak points with them, the most notorious of them being the time wasted when performing mass renaming (in fact, you can't rename more than a file/folder at once) or when browsing your hard drives, and I am not talking about fast copy/move/delete operations here! When there's time wasted, the only thing to do is speed up the workflow, and the solution is to use the right tool to help you - a program, in this situation.

Advanced File Worker is a program developed by a software company called Computer-Expert Group, and its latest release is labeled with the 2.30 version tag. Usually, this program comes as a 30 days trial, but we received a serial number from the producer, so I am going to check the full version for you. The price of the program is 24.95$, its installation kit has almost 1.7MB in size and is very easy to setup. These being said, let's move forward and check the interface and features, as usual.

The first impression I had when opening this program wasn't a good one at all, and things didn't improve much in time. The problem is that, although the program is well organized, it's too complicated to use. I am thinking about only one thing when I say this - it's much easier for a beginner to move from Windows Explorer to a twin panel file manager like Frigate or Total Commander then pay only few dollars less to get a program that's harder to use and also limited in functionality. The main areas of the interface are the six tabs corresponding to the operations that can be performed by Advanced File Worker - deletion, copy/move, renaming, backup, script editing and scheduling. Let's try to discover their secrets now, shall we?

The first three areas use the same interface and have about the same options, so I'll get them all at once. File operations such as removal, copy/move and renaming are things that are easy to perform inside Windows Explorer as well, but what about those times when you have to perform them on thousands of files, sometimes based on different file properties, such as size, extension or creation date? This is where Advanced File Worker's realm starts, and there are three things to care about: file options, extended options and picture options.

The File Options area lets you choose basic options of each operation, such as file/folder to delete, source/destination files/folders for copy/move and renaming, but it doesn't end here. The Extended Options allow you to perform a certain operation based on file size and date, and this is also available for backup, apart from the three operations just mentioned. At last, the Picture Options give you the chance to process only graphics files with specified width and height, in pixels. This can be useful to remove thumbnails from certain folders or remove huge pictures that you don't need, and these are just two examples.

The Backup area helps you save your files into ZIP archives, and the advanced features of this operation include file filtering and password encryption.

Next, you can find a simple script editor, used for editing and running scripts. There's nothing obvious about it, so you should read some documentation in order to get it up and running, but don't be worried, the documentation is well done and detailed enough to take you from noob to intermediate in no time!

At the end comes a very useful feature when we talk about operations involving a large number of files that can last even hours in some cases, so scheduling them is not a good idea, but "a must". All you have to do is edit a script with the operations you want to perform, save it and then schedule when you want to run it. Easy enough, isn't it?

This was Advanced File Worker, and now it's time to draw the conclusions.

The Good

This program is small and easy to use after reading the comprehensive documentation.

The Bad

The interface of this program is pretty complicated and, despite the fact that Advanced File Worker does its job well, I found it to be almost useless when thinking about its value factor, at least for me.

The Truth

I can't say I hate this program, but I don't like it that much either. I'll stick with Total Commander the same way I did so far, but you don't have to follow me, so my advice is to go ahead and try it for yourselves! Good luck!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: