"[...] TrackerV3* is what happens when an imaginative programmer thinks outside the box.

The utility can actually be run on older Windows, back to Win 98, but they only will shine and show off on an XP machine.

It is to Windows Explorer and a hundred other file managers as the iPod is to the Walkman and a hundred ripoff clones _ or as Mr Thaksin is to a hundred cookie-cutter politicians.

So you may hate TrackerV3 as a cure for which there is no disease, or you may realise this is the file-handling software you have been seeking without knowing it. As I say, sort of like the current political leader.

In a nutshell, TrackerV3 is a single-window explorer, which provides more information, more access, more management and more administration ability than any single software I have seen.

It shows file information like Windows Explorer (only more of it), plays music and video and shows pictures like ACDSee (only more informatively), makes folder and file lists like admin software (only far easier and more accessible), inventories a folder or an entire machine like accounting software.

I am a huge fan of small, fast, single-purpose utilities. I deleted more than half a dozen of my best ones after installing Tracker V3, and got big disk-space savings out of it as a bonus.

TrackerV3 is not a small, fast, single-purpose utility. It is a small, fast, multi-purpose utility. It is less than 700KB to download, including documentation, and the installed program itself is 850KB.

I expect in a couple of months I will still be finding features of this outstanding, free utility.

Don't get me wrong about the enthusiasm. I haven't cleaned out my \Program Files folder and replaced everything with this one program. But TrackerV3 is a new, enormously useful collection of utilities in a single, coherent, entirely simple and obvious package.

You can use it to look at fonts, for example, including new fonts you're not sure if you want to install or not. My simple, excellent font viewer is unnecessary.

You can use it to see, and to directly edit, MP3 music tags, identifying song names, artists, year, composer and on and on. My truly wonderful MP3 tag editor is unnecessary.

I can now search for files in several folders at once _ not the whole drive and not one folder at a time. I never have had that feature before. I can change file attributes (such as turning off the read-only flag on copied CD files) and I can get lists of both the actual file size and the computer-allocated file sizes, both of which I previously had to open a Command or DOS window to obtain.

The name of the program belies its roots. TrackerV3 started life in the mind of programmer Donald Lessau as a file finder, and it goes way, way beyond the not-shabby Windows file searcher. My dedicated file finder has bit the dust.

Even the IT Department could like TrackerV3. That is because if you use it, at home or in any non-profit manner, it is free. But if it is used in the workplace, the enterprising Mr Lessau demands just about 30 pounds, overcoming the strange but real fear of freeware in the workplace.

There is no doubt in my mind that this inventive and innovative utility has something useful for everyone. The only question is whether one or more of its dozens of features are good enough for you.

Only you can tell, which is why they still call these maddening objects personal computers. [...]"

* Note that XYplorer was called TrackerV3 from 2000-2005!