It can be used with your mouse like a Windows program. The installation is the usual, straightforward type.Īfter you've installed Far Manager, start it and have a look around.

If you aren't sure, download the 32-bit one. There's 32-bit and 64-bit versions, download the one that matches your Windows. This is also another reason why Far Manager works faster (or at least appears to!). It doesn't just call the Windows Explorer file copy. Certainly I've always found it excellent for copying files and that's what this article is all about.įor copying files it's important to know that Far Manager uses it's own copying routine. Here's what it looks like:Īs you can see, it does not have a Windows interface! It uses the old DOS text based interface, this makes it fast (or it gives that impression). Far Manager looks and feels like Norton Commander. If you really want the leanest and fastest file manager available for Windows, this is it. The other thing is, it's a Windows program, whether or not this is real or just an impression, it does seem that it takes extra time to do things like copying files because it has to update the screen and windows. It's shareware though, which means you should buy it if you want to continue using it. If you'd like a similar but Windows style experience then there's Total Commander, I've used it a fair bit and it's a good choice. Norton Commander was for DOS and since then there's been a lot of similar programs for Windows. You could see two folder (directory) locations at once and this made copying file intuitive because you could see the source and destination folders on screen at once. Years ago when I was starting out the best utility for managing files (copy, delete, rename, etc) was Norton Commander. It's also very slow, the most annoying thing is the time left estimate that with Windows Explorer (especially with Windows XP but Vista and 7 too) goes up and down like a yo yo! When using Windows Explorer if your copying process is stopped part way then you're stuck, you don't know what copied and what didn't.

Far file manager