Sat 16-Mar-91: Having had the opportunity to use PCs extensively
both at work and at home for several years I decided to take a very
subjective look at what have been the most useful MsDos shareware
and PD utilities for me. Here are my choices in an alphabetical
order.

Fri 11-Oct-1991: Updated the text and added some new items on my
list.

Sat 2-Nov-91: Added one further item (shrom) on the list, and
rewrote some others a bit. For the record. I have registered all the
shareware programs on this list.

Fri 17-Apr-92: Updated the version numbers and added one new item.

Tue 19-May-92: Updated the version numbers and added two new items.

Sat 20-Feb-93: Updated the version numbers and added one new item.


ask.exe         The most important command missing from MsDos batch
                programming. Ask comes under many names and has been
                rewritten by countless programmers. Also I have
                written my own in garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsbat41.zip.
                The basic idea of asks is to prompt the user for a
                choice, and return an errorlevel (or sometimes put a
                value to an environment variable), which then can be
                used for a conditional jump in the batch in
                accordance with the user's choice. My ask uses the
                most common ask standard of returning as the error
                level the ascii number of the first letter of the
                user's response, but I also have written an
                errorlevel version.

buffit30.zip    A resident screen scrollback utility. This handy TSR
                utility allows one to see back what has been written
                on screen (through bios). Because the scroll back
                buffer reserves a lot of memory, buffit is best used
                with an upper memory manager like MsDos 5.0's
                unbuilt or lastbyte (see a later item). I have this
                tsr routinely loaded in my autoexec.bat.

ced10da.zip     Command line editor. This facility lets the user to
                recall earlier commands, edit the commands, make
                aliases (synonyms) for the commands, and optionally
                ignore commands. Ced is old, but still extremely
                useful as such even compared to MsDos 5.0 doskey.
                Don't go without it, or some other good, alternative
                command line editor. Despite being old, CED still
                often features on the best program lists of many
                computer magazines. The later versions of CED have
                gone commercial, as far as I know.

dc106f.zip      Directory control from the PC-Magazine by Michael
                Mefford. A simple, but a very useful point and shoot
                facility to copy, move, rename, or delete files. DC
                is an excellent example of the fact that a good
                program doesn't need to be over-packed with features
                nor need it be flashy.

dcf40d.zip      A fast 1-pass copying facility for floppies. One of
                the most irksome MsDos task is copying a floppy in a
                single drive. I have been looking for a suitable
                1-pass program for quite awhile, and found quite a
                few, and this one is it for the timne being. It has
                a nice interface and is fast since it can skip the
                empty sections. Yet, I included this utility with
                considerable doubts, because there still is ample
                room for improvement starting from the missing
                possibility of storing the option settings, removing
                the nag screen, etc.

dirmat20.zip    Dirmatch for comparing & manipulating two dirs side
                by side. Another really great utility from Michael
                Mefford. Originally appeared in the PC-Magazine.

dirw.exe        From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutil37.zip
                utility collection. It is like MsDos dir /w, but it
                also shows the file attributes, and it can be made
                to recurse all the directories. I use it on a daily
                basis to have a backup list of what my hard disks
                contain. It is vindicative to note that in DOS 5.0
                the new  dir command was endowed among other things
                with abilities what my dirw already had.

drx108.zip      A shell for listing and handling lzexe and pklite
                etc. compressed executables. A very useful companion
                to lzexe and pklite. Nothing is perfect, though. I
                am not happy with the fact that dirx forcibly leaves
                one to the target directory on exit. Also the
                documentation leaves exceptionally much to be
                desired in a top utility. But the basic idea is very
                sound, and to my knowledge there are no alternatives
                (which is rather strange) so dirx is left to hold
                the field at the moment despite its faults and
                non-support. There is a later version than 1.08 but
                it has configuration file problems.

dosclip.com     "A TSR utility that provides Windows-like
                cut-and-paste facilities to applications running
                under DOS". A PC-Magazine utility by Douglas Boling
                in vol11n07.zip. I use it for example for cutting
                and pasting commands and data when being connected,
                using MsKemit or Telnet, to your Unix hosts garbo
                and chyde. The only problem is that the hot keys are
                too common and may thus interfere with other
                applications. For a patch see garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2
                /post09.txt.

fed153.zip      FileEDit binary editor for MsDos by Phillip Nickel.
                Binary (or rather hexadecimal) editors are
                specialized utilities needed only occasionally for
                advanced usage. As with ascii editors the choice of
                one's binary editor is a matter of taste and there
                are other goods ones like beav.

gsz1106.zip     Full-screen version of Zmodem file transfer
                protocol. Chuck Forsberg's Zmodem has become the
                veritable standard of file transfers from BBSes and
                between PCs and hosts. GSZ brings the visual
                interface to DSZ that has been formerly lacking
                while it has been offered by some telecommunication
                programs such as Telix. Forsberg's programs must be
                the most frequently updated programs on the scene,
                which is not an unqualified boon.

keyrate.exe     From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutld20.zip
                utility collection. What it effectively does is that
                it speeds up the cursor movement. An absolute
                necessity because the slow default keyrepeat rate
                makes moving the cursor a real pain in the neck.
                Mostly found only in commercial packages. Haven't
                seen many shareware or PD "competitors", but I may
                be too "optimistic". MsDos 5.0 introduced this
                feature into the mode command, which goes to show
                that the idea was a good one.

list77a.zip     Vernon Buerg's list program, a definite must for
                file browsing. It is so good that many other
                programs rely on list instead of having browsing
                routines of their own. Currently contains three
                versions of list of varying program sizes. Very
                handy also as a "grep" finder using the /F option.

pcopy787.zip    Patriquin's really fabulous copy program with a huge
                selection of useful optional switches. The current
                version is pcopy92c.zip, but the program and its
                installation have become so bloated that I have
                personally preferred to stay with an older version.
                In fact I still use version 5.0 on my old Zenith
                portable.

pklte115.exe    PKWare's compress and uncompress executables. One of
                the great ideas of 1990 came from France from
                Fabrice Bellard. He wrote lzexe91.zip (currently) to
                decompress executable at call time by putting the
                decompression code into the executable. PKWare took
                the idea (an echo of the .arc debacle?), and
                developed with their background a more professional
                product. I must say, however, that I don't like
                pklite's (commercial version's) ability to make
                irreversible compressed executables, because this
                increases the danger of virii going undetected.

pkz204g.exe     The most useful all-round archiver. From PKWare.
                (Surrounded by some totally stone-age hassle around
                the encryption issue when exported outside North
                America). Pkzip was born out of the controversy and
                litigation on .arc archiving. There is also a Unix
                (actually multi-platform) version of zip by Mark
                Adler, Rich Wales, Jean-loup Gailly, and others of
                the InfoZIP programming group. Zip is my preferred
                choice in garbo.uwasa.fi archive maintenance with
                zoo coming second with zoo's date stamp problems.
                Despite its dominance, pkzip is not without its
                downsides. Beside the encryption issue, the 2.0
                release was announced almost a year prematurely. It
                became known as a classic case of vaporware, and at
                first release pkz204c.zip was outrageously buggy and
                sloppily documented.

qedit215.zip    QEdit, SemWare's text editor. More than perhaps any
                other category of programs, the choice of a text
                editor is a matter of taste. I have opted for QEdit
                because it has the same basic WordStar-like commands
                than Borland's Turbo Pascal interface, is nicely
                configurable, and has a fair macro language for
                advanced users. The only major thing I personally
                miss very much is a right-side justification.

scanv100.zip    VIRUSCAN scans for a great number of major virus
                strains. McAfee's virus scanner has drawn true
                world-wide acclaim. I've needed it just once in
                earnest, but that's enough to get it on this list.
                One of the utilities that has been very frequently
                updated to keep up with the developments. By the
                time you read this, it is likely that the version
                number has grown again. I have been personally very
                pleased with the exemplary support from McAfee.

shez86.zip      A shell ("Compress Companion") to drive the many
                archivers for MsDos (that is for the programs
                un/compressing and clustering files). By Jim Derr,
                who has constantly been keeping Shez up to date with
                archiver developments. Makes life easy with so many
                alternative archiver methods in use. The number of
                the menu driven / hotkey options in this program is
                something to behold. Like most of the other programs
                on this list, I need it every day. Among its many
                advanced usages is the possibility of using it to
                convert archives from one format to another.

shroom2d.zip    ShellRoom. Swap to disk when shelling from an
                application. One of the big problems with many
                programs that allow the user to shell to Dos, is
                that the user is left with little memory. This very
                useful utility remedies that by swapping the
                application to dos when the application shells.
                Turbo Pascal is the only important application I
                have found so far that is not amenable to SHell
                ROOM.

snippr26.zip    Snip the screen into a file originally by Tom
                Kihlken in the PC-Magazine. The later versions are
                tweaks, that is the original source has been
                developed by several different savants. This TSR
                utility can capture text from the screen, and send
                it to the printer, a file, or the keyboard buffer as
                if typed. See garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/post09.txt for
                a patch to customize the Snipper hotkey.

sst_53b.zip     Seek and thou shalt find Supersonic Search Tool
                formerly called Whereis. An excellent filename
                finder by Keith Ledbetter. Fast, with many useful
                options including browsing inside archives and
                executing commands on found files. (Echoes of Unix
                find). Can also find and list the duplicate files on
                a hard disk even if there are better, specialized
                programs in that respect. As far as the rumor has
                it, it is again in for a change in name.

tlb-v220.zip    The Last Byte MsDos Upper Memory Manager. It enables
                loading device drivers and TSRs to high memory. Such
                a utility becomes a practical necessity when the
                number of memory-hungry TSRs grows as happens on my
                MsDos 3.30 office 386 where I have, for example, a
                network driver to connect to our department's laser
                printer. None of the upper memory managers are
                simple to use, but Dan's is not prohibitively
                difficult as some others. At the time of first
                writing this Dan was upgrading to 2.00 with a new
                user interface. (I was of the beta testers, and I
                don't accept such a task easily because of my own
                time limitations).

tlx320-?.zip    Telix 3.20 telecommunications package. There are
                many excellent telecommunication packages on the
                scene, and the choice is somewhat arbitrary between
                them. Telix was one of the first with inbuilt
                Zmodem, and its user interface is the most
                convenient I know. But none of the telecom progs is
                completely without problems, and this goes for
                Telix, too. Telix has a new owner deltaComm
                Development.

tsrcom34.zip    TSR utilities from TurboPower Software, also a must.
                Most importantly includes mark, release, and mapmem
                for unloading terminate and stay resident programs.
                The veritable standard of TSR maintenance. I have
                often advised the users of TSRs to apply mark /
                release from tsrcom rather than using the TSRs' own
                methods for removing them from the memory because of
                the danger of leaving holes and finally crashing the
                machine.

..................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi      Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives 128.214.87.1
Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa
Internet: ts@uwasa.fi Bitnet: salmi@finfun   ; SF-65101, Finland
