You may be 100% satisfied with TC

Lordy I am incredibly not... you should read my posts over there sometime.  My problem with switching from TC is that it offers some specific things I cannot live without.

OTOH TC's folder tree implementation is awful (though in one way (only) it's better than xplorer2's:  at least TC will display a second tree in the right panel). Its tab implementation isn't as robust as SpeedCommander's (by the way: how do you lock a tab's root folder in xplorer2? or restrict navigation to only up or down the tabs folder hierarchy?).  I hate TCs unmoveable button bar (mostly), though it is still more functional than xplorer2's.  TC seems to have trouble from time to time with Network shares, especially in more recent versions: very bad in a file manager!  And TC doesn't currently support Unicode (a huge shortcoming in today's world... funny no one has mentioned that!)

Why don't I turn the table round and ask you to present us with a TC column that does a summary/non-recursive column like x2 does it?

If I get a chance I'll see about using one of the many TC file/folder-count column values (via the column content plugins) to demonstrate that.  However, showing the count of files and folders only one level down (that is: no recursion) seems useless to me.  Why would you want to ignore the subfolders' contents?

The xplorer2 "mini-scrap" is OK... as a replacement for a kind of folder tree (since it appears to link to whatever is the active tab), but seems only "half" implemented.  It acts more like a list of favorite short-cuts than a virtual file container.  It's immovable, too! Why not take that little window and put it in a tab, instead? Then a user could treat it as just another file tab (albeit with "virtual contents").  Indeed why not mulitiple mini-scraps, one in each tab? 

The TC plugin community has created several "scrap" or "virtual" file container plugins that behave like the xplorer2 mini-scrap except you can have as many of them as you want since they appear in their own tabs, you can create new "virtual" folder hierarchies in them, and navigation occurs within the same panel (not in some other panel), there is no need to explicitly save the contents since they persist between sessions automatically (no need for a settings option for this), etc. etc. 

The TC plugin architecture design means a user doesn't have to settle completely for the TC author's personal vision of a usable file manager (thank goodness, because he and I differ considerably on that).  TC is more like Dopus in many regards: both can be viewed as toolkits for creating personalized file managers.  Dopus concentrates on the flexibility of the GUI toolkit whereas TC concentrates on supporting the widest range of file systems, packers, viewers, editors, and metadata engines (via its open plugin design).  The rest of the file managers in the landscape are more about each individual author's personal vision about how to manage files.  Just because xplorer2's GUI does not work the way I personally think a file manager should (and I can back that up with specific examples), does not mean it isn't useful to many others.

There is no perfect file manager, but the less a file manager is implemented toward a specific metaphor of use and the more flexible it is to user configuration (via GUI elements, plugin architecture, what have you), the better chance it will have to approach perfection for any individual user.  Speed of file copying or compatibility with Windows Explorer or a hodge podge of functions, each individually powerful, which nevertheless are not flexibly integrated into a coherent whole,  do not a complete file manager make!

IMHO and with all due respect to all the hard working and talented file manager authors out there, as well as to those users whose file management tasks are more casual by nature.

2 Dirhael

Yeh that Dopus is a monster.  I have a license, too.  It is really the most powerful straight file manager but has so many "little" quirks and lacunae that I have never been able to abandon TC for it.

By the way, Challenge 1 was to place the recursive counts of folders and files in ONE column.  You display two columns in your DOpus screen dump.  So again, Challenge 1 is still not met.

The purpose of Challenge 1 was to show how TC handles custom columns, allowing you to combine various metadata into one file panel column.  Not only that, there is a TC plugin that lets you "overload" a single column with different column values based on file masks.   This is incredibly useful:  for instance, I have a column that shows subfolders/files for folders, dimensions for images, duration for MP3s etc etc.  All in a single column!

well, you did pick the weakest part of xplorer2 (mass rename), but you CAN use metadata in renames.

-umeca74

This response to Challenge #1 to use the xplorer2 token ${Column name} to insert image dimensions gets partial credit only.  The token leaves spaces in the resulting filename.  Is it possible to use regular expressions in xplorer2 to remove them?

use Alt+K and select "Contents" stock column. It computes a total number (files+folders) so it isn't exactly what you look for. For your extra credit, define a coloring rule (Customize | Color coding) based on this column, which is active when the number is >=300

-umeca74

Contents only shows the sum of the files and folders the first level down.  It isn't recursive (which is one of the points of the challenge) and doesn't separate the number of files from the number of folders and at the same time display both values in one column so as to save space. Since the Contents column doesn't show the correct values, no points are earned for displaying the incorrectly identified rows in red.

So no credit for Challenge #2!

we can go on like that for ages :)

Well yes we could.  I have a "million" of real world examples from my daily use of TC.  But the exercise wouldn't reflect well on most file managers ;).  Perhaps a separate thread of real-world challenges from forum participants might help everyone.

All the top-league file managers do more or less the same thing.

Only to the extent that they "manage files". 

Here's an example that matters if you work in thumbnails mode:

In xplorer2, display thumbnails.  Now sort them by date.  To do that, you must either select View>Arrange By>Date or press a 3-key short cut.  Either way, that's three clicks.  Further, there is no obvious way in xplorer2 to make a tool button to perform the sort.

In TC you click once on the column header for date.

I'm not singling xplorer2 out, here.  No other file manager I know of displays the column headers in thumbnail mode.  And this is a really big deal if you need to sort your thumbs by a custom column not accounted for by the menu.

For instance, in xplorer2, how would one sort image thumbs by image dimensions?  Or by age in days?  Or by an EXIF value?  One can do these things, of course (switch to detail mode, sort, switch back to thumbs), but extra steps are involved.

When one file manager takes three steps for another file manager's one step, and the activity represented by those steps is performed repetitively day after day, month after month, year after year, that "two step" ;) difference really begins to add up.

My point is that unless you use each file manager intently for your daily tasks over a period of time, you won't begin to understand how very different they are from each other and how little things that don't seem important at first can make a big difference to your use of the tool in the long haul.