FastView

FastView is a simple file manager designed for PC users looking for an an alternative to Windows Explorer. It provides you with approachable options that can be easily tackled, even by those inexperienced with such software.

It's not wrapped in a setup kit, so you can save the program files in a custom location on the HDD and just double-click the .exe to launch the application. Otherwise, you can keep it stored on a USB flash drive to run it on any PC. It doesn't add new entries to the Windows registry.

As far as the interface goes, FastView adopts a rectangular window with a minimal design, where you can use the tree view to select different drives and directories to access subfolders and files. It can be sent to the systray to become minimally invasive and let you carry on with your regular PC activity.

It's possible to view images in a built-in frame, enter fullscreen mode, go to the next or previous one in the list, rotate photos, zoom in and out, as well as print them. You can also open text documents and copy text in ASCII or hex format, as well as change the encoding mode. The currently selected file can be copied.

When it comes to configuration settings, you can modify the default file extensions to take into account for text, images, web and RTF content types, integrate the tool into Windows Explorer, change the file viewing mode (e.g. list, report, thumbnails), or customize fonts and colors. Multiple UI skins are supported.

It used low system resources in our tests, so it didn't hamper the PC's performance. However, it froze and crashed on several occasions while we were tinkering with the interface elements. We must also keep in mind that FastView hasn't been updated for a long time and probably has compatibility issues with newer Windows.