Turbo Browser 2001 (ver 8.0)
reviewed by Rick Fischer

"It is the first comprehensive and highly integrated toolset for publishing and managing files on your desktop, network,
and the web, maximizing efficiency by merging Internet resources into your computers." That's what they claim.
It was PC Magazine's file utility of the year in 1998 and it was named among Win Mag's Win 100 in 2000. I've been
able to track it back to 1994 when it was produced by Pacific Gold Coast. Pacific Gold became FileStream in 1999.
Here's an overview of where the program is today.

Local File Management
We've all reached some accommodation with the way Windows handles files. Often I just open two windows
representing the drives I am interested in to copy (including drag and drop), delete, or move files. Windows Explorer
improves on that by letting you see thumbnails of graphic files. I can peek inside some of my PowerPoint presentations
(see example), none of my Publisher files and I can view .doc files or Excel file if I activate Quick View.
With Turbo Browser I can see the contents of three drives at once. Caution: drilling down into the directory structure
will overwrite one or more of the other drive windows in Turbo Browser. That's the only part I found unsettling.
Clicking on an Excel, Word or PowerPoint file automatically gives me a fair sized sample. And with PowerPoint I can
actually view the entire presentation without opening the program.

Windows Explorer Turbo Browser
Word Yes (with Quick Viewer) Yes
Excel Yes (with Quick Viewer) Yes
PowerPoint some Yes
Publisher No No
MapPoint No No
Ami Pro Yes (with Quick Viewer) Yes
PDF No with ActiveX & Acrobat reader

Add to that the ability to easily zip and unzip files and you have a very complete suite of file management. I selected a
group of files in Turbo Browser and told it to zip and e-mail it. It zipped the file and Turbo Browser presented me with
my own Outlook address book to make sending it even easier. It then placed the file in my Outlook outbox.
Turbo Browser is supposed to be able to read PDF files using ActiveX and an Acrobat reader. I have the latest version
of the Acrobat reader but I was unable to read PDF documents from within Turbo Browser. It may be a problem with
ActiveX. I really don't know.
With graphic files I can rotate and flip images within Turbo Browser. I can even work with portions of the file. Not bad.
Turbo Browser has filters. If you are only interested in a particular kind of file, say, an Excel file you could set
spreadsheets as the filter. Turbo Browser has filters for text, graphic files, spreadsheets, sound and special files, e.g.,
Java, Perl, LISP.
One more thing. In DOS I used to print my file structure every so often. You can again. Right-click in an open area of a
window and you can print out a list of files shown in that window.

Web File Management
I was able to try a few of the many functions available to Web designers. Our department tech support told me the IT
guys don't really want me digging around in their file structure. I was able to try the html editor by calling up files from my
Web site stored locally. On a split window I was able to see the WYSIWYG version in one pane and the html version in
the other. So? So, you can make small or major tweaks to the html version and see if immediately reflected in the
WYSIWYG pane. This was the first time I wished I knew html tags.
There are FTP capabilities, you can upload, download and "publish" Web pages to sites where you have privileges, capture
an entire Web site and save it to your drive.
If any of this sounds like stuff you can use, check out the FileStream website to see the many things I didn't tell you about.

Missing Manual
The version I reviewed was downloaded from the FileStream site and had no manual. I printed out all of the Help files and
assembled them into a book. That's not the preferred was to do this if you are the customer. I prefer my software on a CD
and a paper manual (first choice). Second choice, software on a CD with a PDF file manual.

Requires: Around 16MB on your hard drive.

Price: $90.
$49.95 Special for Memphis User Group Members for 30 days from date of publication. You will need to identify yourself
as a member of the Memphis PC Users Group when you order.
A time-limited trial version of Turbo Browser can be downloaded from the Turbo Browser Web site:

http://www.filestream.com/turbobrowser2001