1. Fast and reposnsive. I'm working with over 10k pictures

-MrCrispy (February 19, 2007, 12:20 AM)

Me too, close to 10k picture

All I want from an image organizer is -

1. Fast and reposnsive. I'm working with over 10k pictures
2. Ability to select a folder in the tree view and see all pics in that and its subfolders
3. Tagging support for XMP and IPTC. Import and export
4. A proper way to organize/filter views based on tags
5. File monitoring for new folders/pics
6. A nice UI with support for multiple zoom levels

-MrCrispy (February 19, 2007, 12:20 AM)

And I use AcdSee 8. I have tried ver 9, and have found that it supports IPTC.
Except for XMP support (which I am not sure), I think the rest of your 1 to 6 requirements are already there in ACDSee 9.

To be fair to ACDSee, I think it is excellent in term of flexibility and speed (with some minor stability problem), from early ver of ACDSee to ver 8 this program is being geared towards an image organizer rather than a super-speed image viewer.

However, IMHO, I doubt how much better the future of this program can be:
Technically:
1) It is ridiculous that a database centric image organizer fails to provide a smooth path for user to transfer its database from ver to ver (and they are not new in this business). I can imagine the kind of FEAR of those non-technical-literate users in loosing their image database when doing upgrade.
2) The program is not unicode ready. This means under WinXP you can have only 2 diff languages supported (i.e. the native language of your Windows XP, the other one via non-unicode language setting)
3) In spite of frequent request of many users for a support of "NOT" in Boolean expression (when doing search or filter) the author simply ignore that eager and crucial feature. Longtime/experience users might know to play trick with its combination of "Selective browser" and "Uncategoried" category to archive some "NOT" expression, but it is not straight forward and thus is slow and inconvenient.
4) Newer ver make user like me feel that they are changing direction again. They now want to gear towards image editor direction (from an image organizer).

Marketing:
I don't know how many have the same feel as mine, a recent example, the company's claim of a "new" version 9 is rather insincere. I mean that ver is simply a minor upgrade/update (from user's perspective) especially in term of organizing images.
I personally have seen the down of many software applications when they start practising this kind of marketting strategy, especially when there are many competitors in the same field...
The more you play trick to squeeze money (from supporting users), the more users you are going to lost and normally that situation will quickly go into a deteriorate cycle... My advise to their marketting group is to revise their marketting strategy seriuosly before it is too late!
um... I am glad to see more competitors come into the field... IDImager ... ExifPro ... eheheh...good news!

Thank you to all who are trying to help!

If you read the "subject" of my initial post, you should realize that I already got what I want with the "DIR" in a DOSBOX (of course)

I started the thread just to express my feel of missing power in today's O/S (when task orientated matters are involved)

In the DOS day, things like DIR and RENAME are very easy and to get their function extended, one just need to add few more parameters. They are just commands of the DOS (not even a stand-alone utility). But look at Windows utility nowaday, we need a "Multi-Rename" tool just to "rename" easily... If it is not through Rjbull's recommendation (the LS) I don't even know where to get a Windows utility that can do the DIR thing (as in the title).

I am not saying the trick played by D.Opus and xPlorer2 are bad one, they are simply shell to DOS function and is DOS dependent. In a way, new guys who are born after the DOS day, do you want them to learn DOS again just to be able to do the DIR thing?

How nice if LS lets user add a phase at the beginning or append a phase to end of every item it outputs.
I believe there could be a TC plugin for what I want to do, but isn't it a main feature that should be IN the TC program itself rather than an optional plugin?