It's one of the most powerful programs you will ever use, but it can also be one of the most complicated you'll ever use as well. Those who master its secrets will never fear a file management task ever again, but the journey can be a difficult one.

-Innuendo (February 01, 2014, 09:06 AM)

This seems to go with the territory. Powerful software equals complicated.

When I moved from Power Desk, when it became abandonware, I switched to Directory Opus, the most used file manager here, after Explorer. Some years on, the more I use it the less I know.

I suspect that the best guide to these packages is the support that you can get, and the manuals they offer. Directory Opus comes with a manual written by the experts for the experts. So it is not newcomer friendly. But it does have a reactive support forum that does not poor scorn on dumb questions.

Were I seeking a file manager, I would look at support, and the price of course, including frequency and cost of updates, rather than the power under the hood. My guess is that they all steal from one another on the front. If one does something neat, the others will follow.

Another UK user here, with mostly the same complaints. Crap database, especially for classical music, and not even a user friendly interface.

But my biggest beef is the way in which they introduced the new model. I paid for an upgrade a couple of months back, I am supposed to have access to the new model for six months. But apart from the fact that they didn't warn me that within months of one new version they would they would move the goalposts a few miles, they have hidden the access to this new versions so well that I can't find it, even after I was told where to look. A simple screen grab with an arrow to the button I am supposed to see would help.

There was also this puzzling invitation – almost an order – to sign up for some on-line service thingy. There was no clue as to what this was about, certainly no explanation that it was a prelude to imposing a new business model on the world. Maybe there is a confusion with my access because, not knowing what the heck was going on, I used a different email address from the one I use to make purchases.

Worse than this is the contempt with which they seem to hold customers. It really isn't a good idea to insult people who have paid for your product and then come along and ask simple questions. (Not me, other people.)

If a customer doesn't understand something, don't blame them, ask yourself if you might just have got things wrong and explained stuff poorly.

I am now looking for an alternative, but I need one that can import my large database of recordings, not something that has ever been easy with Collectorz software.

The title of this now very old poll may be misleading, but if you look at the options you will see that it is about desktop "index and search software". In other words software that maintains a database of your data and uses that when you want to find something.

Ultra FileSearch "does not use background Indexing". It finds things "on the fly". It is not, therefore, comparable with the programs in the poll. It is a different beast.

Anyone whose task is to "find documents based on specific text contained in them and by selecting the drive and specifying the text" will almost certainly find that index and search software, any index and search software, will be quicker and more efficient than on-the-fly search and find software.