14 DAY TRIAL // Today, I have an interesting event happening...an "Explorer's day"! This wasn't intended, it just happened, but this is life, after all, full of unexpected events. When talking about computers, things look a bit different...only sometimes. In both cases, the current events should be kept for later retrieval, but how to do it?
Talking about myself, I used to keep a diary once, but I wasn't faithful at all, so I had black holes of many months between entries, and the latest entry at this moment is around four or five years old, as I remember. Anyway, my computer's programs keep their logs up to date, and I have to say that I wish I was a computer program when I think about the "tracking past events" part...
Event Log Explorer is a program that can be used to check your computer's log files, filter their contents, search for certain terms or archive them. Even more, you can do such things with the logs located on remote computers, and not only that!
Getting to the details, I can tell you that this program is completely free to use, its latest version is labeled "1.4 Beta 2" and its installation kit is as small as possible, having only 1.12MB in size. Event Log Explorer is compatible with Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 operating systems, so if you got an older version, wake up! For you, it's time to update your OS, and for me, it's the time to check this program's interface and features.
I can't say that I have seen many log explorers so far, but this one looks very good. The interface is easy to use, well organized and up to date. The main window of the program has a menu bar, a toolbar with good looking icons and a work area shared by the computer?s tree view and the log windows area.
The first thing to do after installing the program is to expand the tree view corresponding to your computer and then double click an item to view its log. You can view multiple logs at once, and their windows can be cascaded or tiled inside the log windows area.
Once you have opened a log, click once on an item to view its details. Depending on the log, some items can have different data values that can also be seen here. If you want to filter the log entries, the tool that handles this task can use regular expressions and I must say that this is one of the most detailed filters that I have seen so far. To use it, just press Ctrl+L, the toolbar button or use the command located inside the View menu and set the filtering options.
If you want management, you got it! You can add groups to the computers view to help you track better the resources at your disposal, when you have a lot of computers added here. If you are wondering how to add new computers, it's easy - just use the contextual menu's option called Add Computer or the Tree menu command. If you worry about getting lost, you can use the Add Computer Wizard, an easier way to do what I just described. The wizard can be found inside the Tree menu, so I'll leave you with that and move on.
I'm moving on but I stay in the management area, just to tell you about the last interesting feature I have for you today - bookmarks. The menu hosting this feature is Events, and the good part is that you also get direct links to EventID.Net and Microsoft Knowledge databases to help you find out more about the select log entry.
This was the second explorer of the day, and I hope you'll enjoy it, but before that, we have some conclusions just around the corner!
The Good
Event Log Explorer is a fast, good looking and easy to use tool with excellent features that can prove very useful for a lot of people. At last, the best part of the best...it's free!
The Bad
I can't really see something bad with this program, apart from the outdated Help file...but this is a Beta release, after all!
The Truth
I don't have much to say as final words, because this application is one of the best free programs I have seen lately, and despite its Beta status, I had no problems with it. I highly recommend it to all of you, experts or not!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
