Macintosh Explorer X - 4.5

Actually Path Finder from CocoaTech has had the tabbed browsing, thumbnail previews, etc. for quite a while now. If you are looking for a better Finder than the Finder, this is the way to go IMHO. Plus it has a great little Text editor, Preview alternative, PDF reader, Terminal and HTML editor built in.

Griff

Nevermind the features, the windows vs. Mac, etc... Please work on improving the speed or just stop wasting your time. This is not a meditation tool, and it's not an app to create artwork, where we can put up with the slow processing as long as the end result looks good. In this kind of apps, speed is the end result, and anything that's slower than the Finder is not going to replace it, no matter how intuitive it is, and no matter how many features you come up with.

For the same reason, I replaced Acrobat Reader with Preview to read pdf files, even though it doesn't offer 10 % of the features.

DiskOrder is a good example of Finder alternative that is inspired from a Windows Explorer alternative, and it's actually faster than the Finder. I'll stick to that, even though I prefer more the Macintosh Explorer's concept.

I'll check future versions, and I hope the developper won't simply get defensive and try to convince me that speed is not an issue in this case.

I have been using ME for 3 days and many of its functions simply don't work with my version of Mac OS. After reading feedback it seems this product either works well or barely at all. Curious. My copy looks the business but fails to delivery in key areas such as finding files. The filter tool doesn't work well either and its settings tend to be lost after closing and relaunching the application. I have yet to investigate its many other features but I suspect some of them don't work either. Like many who have given feedback before me, I would agree that it's a 'nice try' and Windows Explorer users will find it a breeze to use but Macintosh users might find it a little cumbersome. The fact that it doesn't work well might disuade Mac' users from giving it a try. I paid the subscription fee but feel the product still needs a lot of development. Perhaps it should have been released as a free 'beta' copy first. Sorry, but I cannot recommend it at the moment. Regards Phil (phil_harvey@mac.com)

This application would definitely make a Windows user feel at home. It has a useful feature set, though I have a few issues with it. One: if you make changes in the Preferences you have to launch a new window for them to take effect, though changes made in the View menu apply immediately. Two: it does not remember window size. This is a problem for me because I prefer a larger font size and the left column won't retain sufficient width to display file names in one line, requiring a manual resize every time I open a window.

And finally, though this is not the author's fault, with the Finder window improvements in Panther, including the Side Panel, most of the advantages of Macintosh Explorer are gone, except for the occasional Windows convert.

I didn't think I'd like it at first because of the size it added to Finder windows, but the Side Panel has grown on me and now makes navigating Finder windows a snap. So I have no real need for a Finder replacement.

Can't get 3.6.1 or 4.0 to run -- just crashes on start.