Or, if you prefer, The Seven, err Eight, Wonders of the Software World
It was very difficult for me to decide which program I wanted to review this 'month,' so I'm reviewing them all!
Up first is TxEdit. I don't know about this Gregory Braun guy. He seems to like to write really useful programs, not to mention compact ones, and release them for free (sort of reminds me of this guy named Linus). I know, for one, that I would gladly pay for his excellent text editor. TxEdit is probably the best text editor out there feature-wise and keeps getting better with each release, but for this simplicity slash speed-minded software-junkie it has too many features and doesn't load just fast enough. TxEdit is a wonderful 'compromise' for me between full-fledged editors such as TextPad and NoteTab Pro and the super-crippled and feeble [but fast, loading that is] Windows Notepad. The Multiple-Document-Interface, large file capabilities, and the automatic import and export of Mac and Unix formatted text are pretty standard. Adding macros, user-defined 'Tools,' customizable toolbar slash everything, however, is not. And considering that the executable of version 3.7 weighs in at a measly 250 KB's and loads almost as fast as Notepad, well, it's a wonder in today's software world of 2 MB downloads of programs that do the equivalent of 2 KB batch files. Overall, everything in TxEdit is very well integrated and very configurable (yes, fonts too), and it is now my everyday text editor of choice. A 16-bit, but less recent, version is available. Gregory Braun's home page has other goodies.
I'm a sucker for nice GUI's. If you've taken a look around my site and seen the screen captures of my Windows desktops, then you know I'm sick of the Windows 95-style interface - I've obviously done a lot to get away from it. The Memphis (Windows 98) Visual Enhancements have just made the Windows 95 GUI a bit more tolerable for me, and I can't imagine a Win95 installation without it. It really is something that must be seen so don't just take my word for it, go download it! It's very easy to install and uninstall [just in case you've found the enhancements incompatible with a proggie or two]. What are you doing still reading this? Check it out!!!
Even though in alpha development, NTSH is a far better command-line shell than COMMAND.COM or CMD.EXE. In the words of the author, New Technology Shell is a multi-threaded Win32 Console app with GUI support. From the Readme.txt file accompanying the program NTSH's features include:
Unix-like commands use of normal slash (/) as a directory separator, instead of the backslash (\) (like in all non-MS operating systems...) powerful command line with history, aliases and more... Auto Complete (look for completion of the current word and apply it when TAB is pressed) ANSI color support in internal commands Things to come: more scripting support mounting" drives in the directory tree support for ANSI color output right-click context-menu to allow dialog-based access to aliases, environment, running jobs,... better documentation (thinking of html files and a real man-cmd displaying them)
I, for one, can't wait.
X-Setup is very similar to MS Power Toys' TweakUI. But it's even better. Considering that TweakUI for Windows 95 was so good that MS decided to make it part of Windows 98, well, just take my word for it, X-Setup is a must for everyone who uses Windows 95. Customization is the key word here, and X-Setup almost lets you do it all, to Windows 95, that is. Undoubtedly, IMHO, it's the best of its kind.
This file manager for Windows 95 and NT has all the best features of Explorer and NC. It's just as fast as Explorer, and has all the features that make Explorer a good file manager, namely the context menu (aka right-click menu) and access to almost all system resources, e.g. Control Panel. But it has NC's dual-pane interface and integrated command line. Servant Salamander works on Windows 95, but is more nicely integrated with Windows NT making an easy front-end to NT[FS]' built-in compression. Servant Salamander has virtually replaced Explorer in my Windows NT installation. It also has a nice file finder utility. Go to the Servant Salamander home page for more info and screen shots.
I'm surprised nobody, at least to my knowledge, has come up with a utility that does just what Free Memory Tool does - move blocks from physical memory to virtual memory on demand. Using this tool has significantly increased system stability and uptime. System-wide crashes are less frequent as I have more physical memory available. Note, however, that I have a permanent swap file, meaning it might not make your system more stable if you don't have a cap on the max size of your swap file. Here's a tip, FMT doesn't work 100% of the time. Use a memory monitoring utility to see if it's working properly.
Windows 95 comes with a task manager, if you want to call it that. Windows NT comes with an even better one, but CCTask beats them both, hands down. Setting priority, cron (task scheduling), hide or minimize windows, 'kill' or 'destroy' processes are all things CCTask can do and do well. However, while CCTask is probably the most full-featured task manager in existence, it also gives you enough rope to hang yourself with (it's not a toy). CCTask is shareware, better send in my registration fee considering it's the only thing in my StartUp group.
Hands down Linux is the best operating system in existence. Linux is already what Bill Gates is promising Windows NT will be a better Unix than Unix. It's stable and fast. It has software, the majority of it free and compares to if not exceeds commercial implementations. It can run Java apps and applets as executables. With the K Desktop Environment, Linux integrates the Internet and the desktop now while Windows 98 and NT 5.0 get delayed yet again and again. And it doesn't crash - machines running Linux tend to be shut down or rebooted only when the hardware fails. As Linus once said How do you power off this machine?
Copyright © 1997 Mark Santos. All rights reserved.