An inexpensive utility simplifies file management
Not all good software comes in a shrink-wrapped box and pounds of manuals. In fact, the slickest-looking boxes sometime conceal the most bugs.
By William M. FrazierSpecial to GCNNot all good software comes in a shrink-wrapped box and pounds of manuals. In fact, the slickest-looking boxes sometime conceal the most bugs.Excellent programs are available as shareware or freeware from Internet distribution sites, and one of the best is the AnyWhere 2000 4.2 file management utility from Liquid Mirror Software, downloadable from .It takes up only 827K. Once you install it, you have 30 days to decide whether you like it enough to pay the $10 registration fee.I was put off at first to see the help files in Hypertext Markup Language instead of the usual Microsoft Help or Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format. I finally decided that downloaders would have a browser anyhow'all that's needed to access the HTML help.Installation is as easy as double-clicking the downloaded aw2000.exe file. AnyWhere 2000 places itself in the right-click context menu. To copy or move a file or a group of files, highlight them and right-click the mouse. Select Anywhere 2000 from the menu that appears, and you are prompted with a directory list that looks like the File, Open list for most programs. You can select a destination directory, a location from a Favorites list or a new directory. To complete the job, choose Copy or Move. There are easy options to add or delete locations on your Favorites list.AnyWhere 2000 will keep you from accidentally overwriting existing items. If you try to overwrite a file, the program advises that the filename already exists. It then gives you the option to cancel the write operation, overwrite the file or rename it. If you try to overwrite an existing folder, the program stops and offers options to cancel the write operation, overwrite the folder, overwrite with a prompt for each file, merge the two folders or rename the target folder.Its developers claim AnyWhere 2000 4.2 is completely rewritten to run faster than previous versions and is only one-seventh as large as before.The download includes AnyWhere Tools, a collection of utilities that appear when you highlight a file and right-click. The tool I like most is called Copy Long (or Short) Filenames to Clipboard. You can find the same information other ways, but this is as easy as it gets. It would be nice if the program took the command further and included file size and date. I would also like it to insert a hard return after each filename.Another utility with a lot of value is Power Rename. You can rename a single file right in Windows Explorer, but it's much harder to change many files with the same extension or similar filenames. Power Rename provides numerous options to rename files based on almost any criteria imaginable. For example, you could set complex patterns such as a common prefix, followed by the filename, followed by a common suffix and then a common extension. You can also specify that each file be sequentially numbered using the # symbol.The Make Writable tool is cool. If you have a write-protected, read-only file or folder, Make Writable can change the attribute so you can write to it.
AnyWhere 2000 installs easily, has useful features, runs fast and doesn't devour space'all for $10
www.sharewarejunction.com
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www.sharewarejunction.com
 | Four small tools in the utility will copy, rename and make files writable'even if they're read-only. |
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AnyWhere 2000 Version 4.2 File management shareware Liquid Mirror Software; Mission Viejo, Calif.; no telephone www.liquidmirror.com/AnyWhere.asp Price: $10 + Inexpensive and good at what it does ' Available only as a download Real-life requirements: Win9x or NT, 1M of free storage |
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