XYplorer 6.3 Review by SoftDistrict.com

Post by **admin** » 17 Sep 2007 20:39

The first fair XY review by a Dual Paner! In the end he is not completely driven away from his habitual tools, but that's okay, of course. Almost okay...

http://www.softdistrict.com/xyplorer-63-review.html

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 17 Sep 2007 21:28

This does sound like a fair review indeed. Although I think the only reason he's not driven away from his TC is that he didn't spend enough time with XY. Had he discover the power & addiction that comes with using highlighting features & Catalog for instance, things might have been different...

I'm only confused with this line: "I would advise my friends to drink one or two beers less and get Total Commander or Frigate"
XY is US$29.50 for a lifetime license, while Total Commander, according to http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm : "A personal licence costs 40 Swiss Francs (CHF) including shipping&handling (US$ 34 online)."

Sounds to me I could buy more beer if I bought XY.... am I missing something?

Post by **TheQwerty** » 17 Sep 2007 21:48

jacky wrote:I'm only confused with this line: "I would advise my friends to drink one or two beers less and get Total Commander or Frigate"
XY is US$29.50 for a lifetime license, while Total Commander, according to http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm : "A personal licence costs 40 Swiss Francs (CHF) including shipping&handling (US$ 34 online)."

Sounds to me I could buy more beer if I bought XY.... am I missing something?

Right, he's telling his friends to drink a beer or two less so that they can put that money towards Total Commander or Frigate instead of the cheaper XY.

I'm curious what kind of options he was looking for in a batch renamer.

I'd agree it can be confusing to new users and perhaps there's need for a type of simple "guided" batch renamer or just a way to easily use pre-entered rename expressions?

Post by **admin** » 17 Sep 2007 22:01

TheQwerty wrote:
jacky wrote:I'm only confused with this line: "I would advise my friends to drink one or two beers less and get Total Commander or Frigate"
XY is US$29.50 for a lifetime license, while Total Commander, according to http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm : "A personal licence costs 40 Swiss Francs (CHF) including shipping&handling (US$ 34 online)."

Sounds to me I could buy more beer if I bought XY.... am I missing something?
Right, he's telling his friends to drink a beer or two less so that they can put that money towards Total Commander or Frigate instead of the cheaper XY.

I'm curious what kind of options he was looking for in a batch renamer.

I'd agree it can be confusing to new users and perhaps there's need for a type of simple "guided" batch renamer or just a way to easily use pre-entered rename expressions?

For me the batch renamer is 1% of XYplorer. It's a weaker (unless you know how to use it!) part of XY and a weaker point of the review that he focuses on it that much. While not mentioning the Catalog! Nor portability!! Nor the superiority of multi-tabs to dual pane!!!

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 18 Sep 2007 00:11

TheQwerty wrote:Right, he's telling his friends to drink a beer or two less so that they can put that money towards Total Commander or Frigate instead of the cheaper XY.

Right, thanks, I missed that word "less"

Renaming: he might have been expecting a full on GUI with lots of buttons, variables you can use, etc You know, like a renamer utility would have.
But XY's renaming capability are quite powerful. There's not "just" Batch Rename, but much more to it.

graham · Post by **graham** » 18 Sep 2007 00:23

admin:

For me the batch renamer is 1% of XYplorer. It's a weaker (unless you know how to use it!) part of XY and a weaker point of the review that he focuses on it that much. While not mentioning the Catalog! Nor portability!! Nor the superiority of multi-tabs to dual pane!!! Laughing

The Catalogue is clearly a major feature but either its application is not immediately obvious or it is simply assumed (wrongly) to be the same as other applications. This has, in my view the most potential for providing substantially better exploitation. Portability - I am amazed this is not prominent but again comes down to the reviewers normal use of file management, assuming they do use them! Finally the old DP and TABS, very hard to see the benefits when you are pre-conditioned. But now that Tabs can optionally open immediately with no delay this has demonstrated to me tabs are just as quick and convenient. I wrongly assumed the delay in opening was because tabs inherently required more processing effort to display! Thus a wrong interpretation can only cloud comparisons if not fully understood.

I think the review was skimpy and fairly meaningless but that is what 'technical' journalists do so well. (My daughter is one with ITP!)
To write a review that is both fair and accurate requires a substantial amount of time to learn XY as it is so feature rich - I feel after a reasonable amount of use I am a long way off, so what chance does a reviewer have who spends a few hours playing around.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 18 Sep 2007 01:51

FWIW, I just submitted the following comments to that blog/review..will see if they get added or not:

As a loyal user of XYplorer for about 20 months, it's nice to see a review that tells some of the good things about XY. However, you seem to have missed two of the most valuable features of XY:
1) Catalog --- The Catalog allows you to maintain your own list of items that allow quick access to files and folders and even websites! See this page in the XY wiki: <a href="http://88.191.26.34/XYwiki/index.php/Catalog" title="Catalog">

2) Support --- The support provided by the author (and some dedicated users) is superior to most any product I've seen. Some new features suggested by users have been implemented in a few days, not weeks or months, and bug fixes have even occurred in less than 30 minutes from release of the beta version that was imperfect.

I'd suggest you explore more of this great product and experience the support provided compared to others and see if you don't agree that XY is definitely worth the price!

Ok, so it wasn't maybe worded perfectly, but just what I typed on-the-fly..

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 26 Sep 2007 08:42

Success! Not only did my comment get posted to that blog, but I got the following email:

I am the editor that reviewed XYplorer on SoftDistrict, and I write this email to thank you for your comment and inform you that today I am going to add a few words to the existing review talking about the Catalog feature.

Thank you very much for your comment, and if you are using other programs that you'd like to see reviewed on our site, please let me know, and I'll do my best to include them in my "to do" list.

So I looked at original review today and see this new comment:

Thank you for your feedback, I took a look and wrote about the Catalog feature too. You can check the new article here.

At last, when a new version of the program will be launched, it’s going to be my pleasure to review it again and point out the new features that are going to be added.

In this comment, there is a link to a new blog entry titled "XYplorer's Hidden Treasure" in which the Catalog is briefly discussed...hey, it's a big step forward to get an update on a review, right?
See the new entry at http://www.softdistrict.com/xyplorers-h ... asure.html

Post by **admin** » 26 Sep 2007 09:02

j_c_hallgren wrote: Success! Not only did my comment get posted to that blog, but I got the following email...

WOW!!!

That's very very good!!!
Thanks, man!

One little thing he did not get right yet:

reviewer wrote:One of the few things that I don’t really like about the Catalog is that new items can’t be added using drag and drop operations, but I understand that this may interfere with the operation described above, so I can’t complain. After all, moving files is something that occurs more often than adding new items to the Catalog…

Well, of course you can add new items using drag and drop! Simply drop them onto the Category item!

Also I guess he did not really get the launch panel power of the Catalog and the fact that you can drop on ZIPs inthe Catalog to add/update items to/in archives.

So there's stuff for his next update of the review...

Post by **admin** » 26 Sep 2007 09:11

admin wrote:So there's stuff for his next update of the review...

Strange fact: the reviewer seems (?) to be the same guy that gave the 2-star-only

review at Softpedia on 18th of October 2006.
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/window ... 8244.shtml

So he seems to be recovering...

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 26 Sep 2007 09:59

Yup! It definitely seems to be the same person! In any case, I'll give anyone a second (or even third) chance to give the proper credit to XY's features...besides, the version in that older review is nowhere as powerful as current, so a new review was appropriate anyway.