I have used a few different types of programs to keep track of documents, but as you may have guessed my favorite is FileHamster. There are many ways to lose work and current versions of files. Files can be corrupted, hard drives crash and people overwrite their work all the time. As I mentioned before FileHamster will keep each version of your file for you as you work. When something goes awry (as it often does with me at the helm of my computer) FileHamster has a simple and quick way to get things back to normal.
If I need to check differences in versions of a file that I have messed up I can use their diff feature which comes with the Advanced version. After diffing them to see which one you want to return to. Just right-click on the revision you want to revert to and choose ‘Restore’ from the menu. This will, of course, put your selected document revision back in the place of where the original file was. If the original file is missing restoring one of the revisions will put that file into the place of the original.
I have used this on Word documents, Excel files, Photoshop files, PHP, HTML and all kinds of other files. FileHamster can restore all of these documents and files to a previous revision in a snap. I really can’t tell you how much I am enjoying this tool. It’s not for lack of trying though.
I am someone who always throws a ton of files out onto my desktop and then eventually gets a huge mess that needs
to be cleaned up. I go through them and organize them by what they are and where they should eventually end up then I cut and paste things to their new location. This process takes up a good amount of my time and isn’t particularly fun or a good way to unwind. I have found a good solution in Fences from Stardock.
Fences allows me to set up several little windows on my desktop that I can put all the items that I used to just throw out onto the desktop into each of these ‘fenced’ off areas. I don’t have to go through my desktop and organize it by hand anymore. If I want to move a certain type of file to a certain location all I have to do is go to the fence that hold that type of file and move it. Each fence allows you to size it so that you can choose how much space it will take up on the desktop. When there are more files than you have room for in a fence the fence will become scrollable. You can also choose to hide all the fences by double clicking on the desktop and unhide them by double clicking again. There are several other ways to make fences useful and customize things.
There are a couple of cons but they should be addressed by bug fixes in the future (I hope). The biggest problem I have is that after my machine has been on for a while the fences seem to disappear, but it is not that big of a deal to me.
Now that I use this my desktop is no longer a wasteland of unaffiliated files and folders. Things are in order and I have just a little bit more time to do more important things; time that I would have just spent reorganizing files and folders.
I just went back to the page for FileHamster and found that they have made some changes to the way they do things. Their product line has been condensed down to three products. After looking at things again I think I have figured out what they have done with their products:
- FileHamster Basic = FileHamster Plus
- FileHamster Advanced = FileHamster Developer Bundle (w/ more plugins)
- FileHamster Enterprise = Everything including Team plugin
They no longer have plugins but have just integrated them into the different versions of their product. I have not previously purchased all of the plugins to check them out so now I am going to have to try to find a way to get them without having to pay for the new full version. Maybe they will throw me a bone since I just started this blog up and have mentioned them a few times. Still waiting to hear about that. When and if they do hook me up I will post about the different new features that the new stuff has.
Update: I just heard back from Mogware and apparently anyone who wants to upgrade from the old version can. I should be posting more on them in the next couple of weeks.
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