Disk Jockey Pro 98, v. 1.02
Disk Jockey Pro 98, v. 1.02
| Disk Jockey Pro 98, v. 1.02 The Ultimate File Manager by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club Clear & Simple, Inc. has produced one of the niftiest utilities to ever hit the market. Disk Jockey Professional 98 (DJ Pro) combines file management with a powerful file viewer that offers support for more than 200 different file formats. Extensive menus and toolbars are added to a familiar Explorer-like interface that allows you to copy, move, open, edit, and delete files. Full support is available to view, create, and extract from zip files, and a powerful built-in feature allows you to search for files by either name or content. Other features include a juke box for playing multimedia files, file filters, drag-and-drop support, context menus, and more. An extensive array of preferences lets you customize much of the program's behavior and appearance, and you can print a document from Disk Jockey without having to open it or own the native application. You can zip and unzip files, and view files within zipped archives. If you've ever received a file you could not open, DJ Pro 98 will allow you to handle these files in its extensive viewer capabilities. From within the viewer, you can select a file for display, select text from the document that is then instantly placed on the clipboard, ready to be pasted into your working document. List of Features File manager (can be used in place of Explorer) File viewing - 200 file types Zip and unzip (using PKZIP format) View contents of zipped files and view files inside zipped archives Automatic copy-to-clipboard Multithreaded copy/move/search/zip/unzip Instant WYSIWYG file print (print files without native application) Flexible file delete (recycle or destroy) Jukebox player (.wav., .avi, .mid, .rmi formats) Compound search Quick, one-button formatting of diskettes Drag-and-drop files and folders Instant display of space used by an entire folder structure Drop-down list of all drives - (total drive space, % free drive space) Sort file list by name, size, date, type Wildcard filters Multimedia tutorials File Formats Supported in Viewer Virtually all word processors, including many legacy formats All spreadsheets, including the three main sellers Databases files from all the main database programs Just about all graphics file formats and presentations program formats Numerous compressed and encoded formats Take Control of Your Computer DJ Pro 98 can make many standard file management tasks much easier, and will really come in handy when needing to look at files as if they were stored on paper in an organized file cabinet. Essentially, four main tools are combined in this nifty program: a file navigator, a file viewer, zip and unzip, and a multimedia player. DJ Pro 98 does not replace your Explorer, a wise idea that will make it more easy for users to gradually migrate to the use of this utility when they might otherwise first open Explorer. The Pro edition contains the WYSIWYG viewer, adds about 10 file formats to the viewer, adds the ability to copy the contents of the viewer to the clipboard, and allows you to print files directly from the viewer. From PC Magazine's "Inside Track" John C. Dvorak writes regularly for PC Magazine ("Inside Track"), and in the July 2, 1999 issue he presented very positive comments about DJ Pro 98, comparing it to the usefulness of the XTree and ZTree utilities in dos-based machines, suggesting DJ Pro 98 could possibly become the built-in file manager in future releases of Windows. In response, many readers replied with their own experiences with this utility, some negative, some positive, and some of these responses are included here. As you may have realized after reading thus far, the features in this utility are not necessarily new or available for the first time, as you can just about perform all these things either already in Windows or with other available utilities, such as the viewing of many different file formats in Inso's Quick View Plus program. In addition, many readers may already have much experience with either of the two main zip and unzip programs, WinZip or PKZIP (built into DJ Pro 98). While these comments are correct, the approach in DJ Pro 98 is to offer these different features in one application. Some readers of Dvorak's comments also experienced "bugs" with initial offerings of this software received via the Internet, which are already being addressed by Clear & Simple. Other available utilities, such as Norton's Navigator and XTreeGold (now updated in the windows-based ZTree Win) have some functions similar to DJ Pro 98, but also some features not yet capable in DJ Pro 98. (See the Reviews link in the left frame to read a quick review of ZTree Win. ZTree Win is an example of such a similar utility that will allow a user to perform functions that are not yet capable in DJ Pro 98.) In addition, some readers experienced difficulties with the stability of the application, certain to be corrected in future releases. As of this writing, Clear & Simple is in the process of releasing beta tests of the upcoming new version 2, which should correct these found difficulties. Suggestion For users with little if any experience with a file management utility that operates in text-based mode, such as in ZTree Win, Disk Jockey Professional 98 is a utility definitely worth considering. Price $69.95 Disk Jockey Professional 98 ($54.95 PC user group price) $44.95 Disk Jockey Standard 98 ($29.95 PC user group price) System Requirements Win 95/98/NT 4.0 486 25Mhz or better processor 12 MB RAM 15 MB hard disk CD ROM Sound Card (optional) Contact Clear & Simple, Inc. 5 Notch Road W. Simsbury, CT 06092 1-860-658-1204 FAX 1-860-651-0354 http://www.clear-simple.com |