Resco Explorer 2003 Version 5.0

Reviewed April 27, 2004
(Updated June 15, 2007)

Let's face it — File Explorer that comes with the Pocket PC operating system stinks. One of the first things I install when I get a new Pocket PC is a good file explorer. In the past, I've used Citadel's Pocket Explorer. It's free and much better than File Explorer, but it has many deficiencies — it doesn't do file associations, there's no multiple selection, it doesn't do network browsing, and so on. I'd heard that Resco Explorer was an excellent file browser, but it costs $25. The big question is, is it worth it? Read on!

UPDATE: Since this review was written, Resco has released two major updates — Explorer 2005 and 2007. As of June 14, 2007, the current version is Resco Explorer 2007 6.10. However, I'm hoping that some of the information here may still be useful.

You can skip to any section of the review here.

Summary
Setup
Features
Documentation & Help
Availability & Price
Gotchas
Conclusions

Summary

This review is of Resco Explorer 2003 Version 5.0, which was released on February 9, 2004. The testing was done on my iPAQ 5550 running Windows Mobile 2003.

New features added in Version 5.0 include:

FTP capability
Drag and drop capability
Storage card formatting
System information
The ability to send more files via IR
HP Mobile Printing support

Setup

Setup consists of installing the program, registering it and configuring the options you want. I'll cover each of those in the next three sections.

Installation

Installing Resco Explorer is pretty standard. You run the installation executable, and you'll see the license agreement.

Installation License Dialog

If you accept the license, the next dialog allows you to select which components of Resco Explorer you want to install.

Installation Component Selection Dialog

You'll probably want to install Resco Explorer, the main reason for getting this. You can also choose whether or not to install the registry and FTP components on your Pocket PC.

There are also two desktop components that you can install. The Cryptographic Extension allows you to encrypt files on your PC, while the SendTo Extension allows you to send files to your Pocket PC using a right click. I'll show the desktop components later.

When the installation completes, you'll see a completion screen.

Installation Completion Dialog

Clicking Finish will open a browser to display some helpful information about using Resco Explorer.

On the Pocket PC, you'll get three items installed in your Programs folder — Resco File Explorer, Resco Registry and System Info, as shown in the following image.

Installed Programs

Resco Explorer will work on Pocket PCs running Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003. There are also versions for Handheld PCs and Smartphones. It ran fine on my iPAQ 5550 in both main memory and in the iPAQ File Store (user-accessible Flash ROM).

Resco Explorer takes about 1,082 KB of storage memory on a Windows Mobile 2003 device with all components installed. When running, it took about 737 KB of program memory.

One surprise I found was that my Pocket Internet Explorer Favorites was also updated with a link to Resco's mobile site. Unfortunately, the site seems to be ads for their various products, not information specifically about Explorer. Modifying a user's Favorites should at least be an option, not automatic. It's bad enough when companies do that on a desktop PC, but storage is even more precious on a Pocket PC.

Registration

When you invoke Resco Explorer or the Registry Editor, you can register it using the Registration... action in the File menu, which displays the dialog shown below.

Registration Dialog

Resco has a fairly innocuous registration scheme — you only need your name and a five-digit key. They don't make you type in some 25-character registration code or, worse, have an activation scheme. If you register successfully, you'll get the confirmation dialog.

Registration Confirmation

Configuration

Configuring Resco Explorer is done in the Options dialog You can access the dialog using either the Options... action in the File menu or the Options button in the Advanced Toolbar. This will display a tabbed settings dialog, and I'll cover each page below.

The Options Tab

When you first display the options dialog, you'll see the following screen.

Options Dialog's Options Tab

The Remember last opened folder check box allows you to determine whether opening the File Explorer will take you to the last folder you were browsing in or the My Documents folder.

The Open Folder Shortcut with Resco Explorer option is misnamed. What it does is allow you to decide whether shortcuts to folders you create are opened in Resco Explorer or as Windows folders. However, once the shortcut is created, changing the setting has no effect on what program opens the shortcut. The option should be called Create folder shortcuts to use Resco Explorer.

Double Tap Activation controls whether a single tap or double tap will open files. The default is a single tap, but I don't like that because it's not like Windows and makes it too easy to accidentally open a file (like when you do a tap-and-hold but don't hold quite long enough). As it's a matter of preference, though, and it's easy to change, this isn't really a problem.

Use IrDA via OBEX controls how files are beamed. The help didn't tell what effect having this on and off had, but the FAQ did. If you're beaming a file to a Palm or a newer Pocket PC (running Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003) that supports OBEX, leave the option checked. If you're beaming to a device that doesn't support OBEX, like older Pocket PCs running Pocket PC 2000, uncheck the option.

You can also control the font size (small, normal, large or extra large) to use, whether ClearType is used for rendering and whether the font is bold or not. There's no way to select what font is used, and there isn't any way to change the font color or attributes based on different file types. For example, it might be nice to have folders in bold, normal files in normal font and hidden files in red italic text.

The Set Default Options button restores the default options, discarding any changes you've made in the dialog. Be careful, because tapping the button doesn't ask you if you're sure you want to reset the options; it just does it. There should be a message asking for confirmation, I think. You won't lose any data, but you may have to go through eight settings pages to restore your preferences.

The Add-Ins Tab

The Add-Ins page allows you to control how the network, ZIP, registry and FTP add-ins work.

Options Dialog's Add-Ins Tab

Most of the options are self-explanatory, but a few items need some discussion.

First, the Show "My Device" check box always seems to be grayed out. I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to show the root, but I couldn't get the option active. I thought that maybe, if My Device was the only root, the option might become active, so I turned off all of the plug-ins and made the Network an entry under My Device instead of a separate root, but that didn't work. I contacted Resco about this, and they confirmed that it doesn't do anything anymore and will be removed in the next version.

Second, changing the state of the Show Network radio buttons will require a soft reset for the change to take effect.

Third, changing the state of the Active Add-Ins will require you to close and restart Resco Explorer. You are prompted to do it, so it's not a big deal, but it's something to know.

Finally, tapping the File Associations button displays the following dialog.

Browser Add-Ins Dialog

This allows you to associate specific file extensions with the encryption, registry and ZIP add-ins; it is not a general file association dialog. Because it isn't a general association manager, I would probably rename it to "Add-In Associations" (although, technically, encryption may not be an add-in).

The Browser Tab

The Browser page allows configuring what files are displayed in File Explorer and how they are shown in the List View.

Options Dialog's Browser Tab

Most of the options need no explanation, but I will explain three of them.

Use vertical windows splitter controls the orientation of your tree and files panes (also called the Tree View and List View), as shown below.

Horizontal Splitter

Vertical Splitter

The vertical splitter is more like Windows, but, on a portrait display, I think a horizontal splitter makes more sense (which is probably why it's the default).

Full row selection controls how the selected file is displayed, as shown below.

Full Row Selection

File Only Selection

Less obviously, this setting also controls where you can tap to select the file. If full row selection is on, tapping anywhere in the row will select the file; otherwise, you have to tap the file's icon or name to select it.

If your List View is wider than the screen, I would strongly suggest using full row selection. This will allow you to see what files are selected even if the names are scrolled off the left side of the screen.

Finally, Hide Folders controls whether or not folders are displayed in the List View. They're always displayed in the Tree View, so you may want to turn them off in the List View to make finding normal files easier.

The Viewer Tab

The Viewer tab allows you to set what file viewer you use and whether the viewer is used when opening a file.

Options Dialog's Viewer Tab

The File Viewer radio buttons allow you to choose Resco's built-in file viewer or an external viewer. Unless you have another viewer, like some iPAQs that shipped with one, use the built-in one.

The Use Tap to settings allow you to control whether tapping a file displays the file in the viewer or opens the file with its associated application. I'm not sure what Use "OpenDoc" association path does; some files have both an Open and OpenDoc path in the registry, but I'm not sure what the difference is, and the help didn't explain any further.

The Files Tab

The Files tab allows setting what operations require confirmation and what the Send To action does.

Options Dialog's Files Tab

The options are fairly obvious, and I won't bother explaining them here.

The Zip Tab

The Zip page allows setting defaults for file compression and extraction.

Options Dialog's Zip Tab

Update Mode allows you to specify how files are added to an archive. There are four compression modes:

Add and Replace
Freshen Existing
Move to Archive
Update and Add

Unfortunately, I don't think those descriptions make clear what the differences are. Add and Replace will add any selected files to the archive, replacing existing files in the archive with the ones being added. Freshen Existing only updates files that are already in the archive, and only does it if the selected files are newer than the ones in the archive. Move to Archive is like Add and Replace, but deletes the original files after compressing them. Update and Add adds any files selected to the archive, but won't replace existing files with the same size and date.

Level allows controlling how much compression you want. There are five compression levels:

Best
Normal
Fast
Extra Fast
Uncompressed

Typically, you have to trade compression for speed — the more compressed you want the file, the longer the compression will take. This means Fast and Extra Fast will be less compressed than Normal, but slower than Uncompressed.

The last compression setting allows you to decide whether or not you want to check the archive's integrity immediately after creating it. Doing so will slow the creation down, of course.

For extraction, Use folder names will preserve the original folder hierarchy of an archive. Compression will always save folder information, it seems.

I wasn't sure what the Use Ansi Code Page setting does, and the help didn't explain it. E-mail to Resco got a reply saying that file names are put in the archive using the code page associated with the region you're in; this option forces the use of the ANSI code page in case the compression module can't find the files.

Finally, Overwrite Mode controls whether or not files in the archive will replace existing files on your device. There are four modes here:

Prompt to Overwrite
Overwrite Only Newer
Overwrite All Files
Never Overwrite

The second choice is a bit confusing, because it sounds like you'll overwrite newer files on your device with older files in the archive. That seems backward to me; you generally only want to replace older files with the newer ones in the archive, and, in fact, that's what the option does. Perhaps the option really means "Overwrite Only With Newer", but it should be changed to "Overwrite Only Older".

The Registry Tab

The Registry page allows specifying what registry changes require confirmation and where registry keys are displayed.

Options Dialog's Registry Tab

Only two items really need any explanation.

Prompt modifications will ask for confirmation after any registry changes. If you're new to the registry, this is probably a good thing, but I found it got in my way and turned it off.

Show Keys controls whether keys nested in the selected key are shown in the List View along with values. This is similar to the option on the Browser tab allowing the display of folders in the List View.

The FTP Tab

Finally, the FTP tab allows controlling various actions when transferring files.

Options Dialog's FTP Tab

File Transfer Protocol (or FTP) allows transferring files from one computer to another over a network. Resco added this capability to this version of Explorer, and there are several options to consider.

The Default Action drop-down list contains four options:

Prompt for action
Overwrite existing
Resume if possible
Skip existing

Although it's not clear here (and there's no help, either), I think this is the default if you're trying to replace one file with another. Prompt for action will display a dialog asking if you want to replace the file, Overwrite existing will replace the file without asking and Skip existing will leave the existing file alone. Resume if possible may be to cover the case where a download was incomplete, and you're trying to resume the download — if the existing file was an incomplete download, the file will be downloaded; otherwise, the download will be skipped, like Skip existing.

If a download doesn't complete for some reason, the Incomplete Downloads drop-down allows you to choose what happens. You can leave the incomplete file on your system, delete it or try to reconnect and resume the download. When downloading a file, Resco adds an RFTP extension and doesn't remove the extension until the download succeeds. This is very useful, as it prevents replacing any file on your system with a potentially incomplete version.

FTP allows two main types of file transfers — ASCII, used for text files (like HTML and TXT files), and binaary, used for files that might contain the ASCII end-of-file character (like images and Word files). The Transfer Type drop-down allows choosing ASCII, binary or automatic, where the FTP client tries to pick the right type. I don't know how they decide which to use, though; most FTP clients I've used give you an editable list of file types to be treated as text files, assuming the rest are binary, but there's no such list here. E-mail to Resco cleared the situation up — the list of files treated as text is hard-coded into the program.

Features

I'll break the review into three main sections corresponding to the three shortcuts added to the Programs folder and the desktop components:

File Explorer
Registry Editor
System Info
Desktop Components

The following sections will cover each program.

File Explorer

When you start Resco Explorer, you'll notice that it uses a two-pane view, similar to Windows Explorer. Whether you prefer this to a one-pane browser, like Pocket Explorer, where the files are displayed as leaves of the folder tree, is a matter of taste.

Here is a comparison of the two schemes.

Resco Explorer Two-Pane View

Pocket Explorer One-Pane View

Another thing you may notice is that the File Explorer is fast. I displayed the entire Windows folder, including hidden and ROM files, in four file explorers, and summarized the results below.

Product	Time (seconds)	Notes
Resco Explorer	2-3
Citadel Pocket Explorer	12-14
Daniel East's DEXplor	11-13/4-6	The first time was displaying the diretory the first time; the second time was displaying it again
Microsoft File Explorer	3-4	Hidden files were not displayed

As you can see, Resco's won the speed race easily.

With the File Explorer, you can view files on your Pocket PC, files on your network, the Pocket PC registry and FTP sites. The following image shows those four items.

Resco Explorer Roots

In the above screen shot, you can see the main parts of the user interface, which include:

The Folder Bar: The bar that says "My Device" immediately below the Start menu and title bar.
The Tree View: The list of directories immediately below the folder bar.
The Splitter Bar: The gray bar immediately below the Tree View. Dragging the splitter bar allows to you control how much of the Tree View and List View shows.
The Header: The column headers immediately below the splitter bar. Tapping on a column header allows you to sort the List View based on that column in ascending order. Tapping the column header again will sort in descending order. Unfortunately, no arrow is displayed in the column sorted on to display the sort order, like on Windows.
The List View: The list of files immediately below the header. As is typical of most file browsers, selecting a folder in the Tree View displays the files in that folder in the List View.
The Advanced Toolbar: The group of icons immediately below the List View.
The Menu Bar and Toolbar: The standard menu and toolbar immediately below the Advanced Toolbar.

The File Explorer is the largest and most complex program, so I'm going split this section up into several sections based on the menus and toolbars you can use:

File Menu
Edit Menu
View Menu
Main Toolbar
Advanced Toolbar
Folder Bar
My Device Context Menu
Folder Context Menu
Storage Card Context Menu
File Context Menu
My Network Context Menus
My Registry Context Menus
My FTP Locations Context Menu
FTP Session Context Menu
FTP Folder Context Menu
FTP File Context Menu
ZIP Archive Context Menu
ZIP Archive Folder Context Menu
ZIP Archive File Context Menu

File Menu

The image below shows the basic File menu.

Explorer File Menu

I said "basic File menu" above because the File menu can change depending on what is selected in the Tree View. The menu shown above is what you see if the selected item is in the My Device or My Network hierarchy. The images below show what the menu looks like if the selected item is in the My Registry or My FTP Locations hierarchy.

File Menu With Registry Item Selected

File Menu With FTP Item Selected

The New action with a Registry item selected will be covered in the Registry Editor section, while the New FTP Session... action with an FTP item selected will be covered in the My FTP Locations Context Menu section.

The above figures do show one minor user interface problem, though. In the first two images of the File menu, there is a separator above the Receive and Run... actions, but there is no separator above them if an FTP item is selected. Those actions have nothing to do with FTP locations, and there should be a separator there.

The New Folder action creates a new folder in the selected folder, as the image below shows.

Creating A New Folder

You can create a new folder on your network or on a remote host during an FTP session. Oddly, if New Folder is attempted while My FTP Locations is selected, it is equivalent to having selected New FTP Session.... I think New Folder should simply be grayed out in that case, unless Resco intends to allow creating groups of FTP connections organized in folders.

The Receive action just allows you to receive files via IR beaming. It's a shortcut to the standard Pocket PC beaming application.

The Run... allows you to run an arbitary program. It basically gives you the Open With... dialog, and allows you to select a program to run, as the following image shows.

Run Open With Dialog

In fact, if a file is selected in the List View, that file's path will be shown in the Arguments field, and the associated program may even be shown in the File field. That doesn't happen all of the time, though. For example, I selected Run... with a WMV video file selected, but the File field did not show Windows Media Player. If the program isn't shown, the Location field will contain the folder selected in the Tree View or any folder selected in the List View.

Selecting the location based on the selected folder seems reasonable, but, quite often, that folder won't contain any executable programs. I would prefer always starting with the Program Files folder shown in the Location field, but, as a compromise, maybe the Program Files folder could be shown if the selected folder did not contain any executables.

The Options... action displays the Options dialog, which was discussed in the Configuration section.

The System Info... action is equivalent to running the System Info program, which is covered in the System Info section.

The Registration... action displays the Registration dialog shown in the Registration section. It usually works well, but I did encounter a couple of problems with the dialog.

First, once you select the Registration... action to view your registration information, you'll have to enter the registration code again. The name you used is shown, but the code is blank. If you don't enter anything and tap OK, you'll get the message shown below asking if you want to repeat the registration.

Registration Error Message

If you answer No, you'll exit the Registration dialog, but it's not clear whether your old registration is still in effect. The registration still seems to be valid, but adding a Cancel button to leave the registration information alone would make this clearer.

Second, after using the Registration dialog once, Resco Explorer hung. The "Thank your for purchasing our product" dialog was displayed, but tapping OK wouldn't close it. I couldn't close Resco Explorer from iTask, either, and had to use the Memory settings applet to close it. This only happened once, though, and was not repeatable.

Favorites is a cascading menu that allows you quick access to folders you use frequently. It is initially populated with entries for the My Documents and Start Menu folders, but you can add your own (or delete unwanted ones) using the Add/Delete... action, which displays the Organize Favorites dialog shown below.

Organize Favorites Dialog

You can select the folder to add using the Folder drop-down, give the folder a different name using the Name field, then add it to the list with the Add new button.

If you select a folder in the list, you can also organize the favorites by using the Move Folder Up and Move Folder Down buttons in the toolbar, or delete the folder from the favorites list using the Delete Folder button.

I think it would be very useful to add two more types of favorites here — favorite programs and favorite files. If this dialog were a tabbed dialog, that would be easy.

The About... action displays version and copyright information, of course, but also displays who the program is registered to and gives some helpful URLs and E-mail addresses, as the following image shows.

About Dialog

Oddly,the copyright still shows 2002, even though the program is called Resco Explorer 2003 and this version was released in 2004. Resco should probably rename the product Resco Explorer 2004 so people don't think they're getting an older version.

Finally, the Exit action closes Resco Explorer. This doesn't conform to Microsoft Pocket PC user interface guidelines, but I personally like it.

Edit Menu

The Edit menu is fairly standard, as the image below shows.

Explorer Edit Menu

Some items probably could use a little explanation, though.

NOTE: The menu displayed is different when something in the My Registry area is selected. That version is covered in the Registry Edit Menu section.

Invert Selection reverses the selection state of items in the List View. If an item is selected, it becomes deselected; if an item is not selected, it becomes selected. This is useful if you want to delete all the files in a folder except one, for example. Just select the file you want to keep, tap Invert Selection to select the rest of the files, the tap the Delete button.

The Drag'n'Drop Mode action toggles the drag and drop state. Normally, dragging in the List View will select the files you drag over. If Drag'n'Drop mode is on, though, you can drag files to another folder and drop them there. You'll be prompted for what to do when you drop them, as shown below.

Drop Menu

The problem is that it is not easy to use. When you start to drag, you'll get a "boop" sound, but there often won't be any visual indication of a drag going on. A couple of times, I did get a ghost of the file I was dragging, but most of the time I didn't.

Also, when you drag into the Tree View, it can sometimes scroll too quickly, which makes it hard to drop the file in the folder you want.

Finally, Resco Explorer locked up once while I was testing drag and drop.

All in all, I find it easier and more reliable to cut (or copy) and paste.

The Single/Multi selection action toggles multiple selection on or off. Normally, when you tap a file, it selects that file and deselects any other files that were selected. In multiple selection mode, tapping a file reverses its selection state — the file is selected if it wasn't selected, and becomes unselected if it was selected. You could do this using the Ctl key of the virtual keyboard, but this is a nice shortcut.

However, the name of the action should be changed. Calling it Single/Multi selection does not make it obvious which mode is engaged when it's checked or not. In this case, unchecked is single selection and checked is multiple selection. It would be clearer if the action were simply called Multiple Selection Mode. That makes it obvious what a check means.

Alternatively, the action name could change depending on the mode. When single selection mode was active, the menu would display a Multiple Selection Mode action; when multiple selection mode was active, the menu would display a Single Selection Mode action. However, I tend not to like this method because it always shows the mode that is not active.

The Find... action allows you to find files on your Pocket PC or network based on several criteria, as the images below show.

Find Dialog's Find Tab

Find Dialog's Advanced Tab

NOTE: The dialog displayed by Find... is different when something in the My Registry or My FTP Locations roots is selected. The registry version is covered in the Registry Edit Menu section; the FTP version will be shown after the main version is discussed.

On the Find tab, you can specify the files you want to check in the Search field, using wildcards if you want. The Search field has a drop-down list populated with some common searches, but it does not remember any searches that you may have done that aren't in the list. The search will take place in the folder specified in the From field and any subfolders. The Find button will start the search.

The Find text button displays the following dialog, and allows you to find files that contain the entered text, taking into account any criteria specified on the tabs.

Find Text Dialog

The Text to find field is a combo box that remembers your previous searches.

Personally, I'd prefer just having a Text combo box on the main Find dialog. There would be no Find text button, and the Advanced tab would have a Text section containing the Whole words only and Case sensitive check boxes. There could also be some other criteria, like Starts with and Ends with. The only downside to this suggestion is that the search results list would display one or two fewer entries, possibly making you scroll more to see all of the matches.

The Feed to listbox button sends the results of the search to the List View of Resco Explorer. From there, you can open the files if you want. This is necessary because tapping on a file in the results list takes you back to the Explorer window with the file selected in the List View. I really found this to be counter-intuitive, and wish you could simply tap or double-tap the file to open it (depending on your settings). I'd replace the Feed to listbox button with a Locate button which would do what a tap does now — return you to the List View with the selected file highlighted.

The Advanced tab allows you to narrow the search based on the date of the file, the file size and the file attributes.

The FTP version of the Find dialog is very similar to the main version.

FTP Find Dialog's Find Tab

FTP Find Dialog's Advanced Tab

Nothing more really needs to be said about this version; the dialog is just a simpler version of the main Find dialog.

View Menu

The View menu is fairly self-explanatory, being similar to what you'd see in desktop Windows.

Explorer View Menu

About the only thing that needs explanation is the Date &Time action in the Show Columns cascading menu. That toggles between having the Date column show the date that the file was last modified and the date and time of the last modification.

Main Toolbar

The Main Toolbar is fairly standard, as the following image shows.

Main Toolbar

The first icon toggles displaying the Advanced Toolbar, the second icon moves you up one level in the folder hierarchy (very convenient when you're in a folder with lots of folders in it), and the remaining icons are the standard cut, copy, paste and delete actions.

Advanced Toolbar

The Advanced Toolbar gives you easy access to several additional functions.

Advanced Toolbar

The first four icons are fairly obvious, taking you to the My Device folder, displaying the Options dialog, displaying the Properties dialog for the selected item and displaying the Find dialog, respectively.

The fifth icon displays the Encrypt Files dialog, allowing you to encrypt selected files.

Encrypt Files Dialog

At it's most basic level, all you have to do is specify a password to encrypt files. Encrypting a file actually produces a new .rxf file with the original file's extension added to the new file's name. For example, if you encrypt test.txt, the encrypted file will be called test_txt.rxf. You can specify whether or not you want to delete the original file as part of the encryption process.

If you want to venture past the basics, tapping the Settings button gives you a wide variety of encryption techniques.

Encrypt Settings Dialog

The Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider setting provides "strong" encryption, but may not be available in all locations. Encryption algorithms include the following:

RC2 (128-bit)
RC5 (128-bit)
DES (56-bit)
3DES Two Key (112-bit)
3DES (168-bit)

The Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider setting provides "normal" encryption. Encryption algorithms include the following:

RC2 (40-bit)
DES (56-bit)

I'm not sure if there's a difference between the two DES 56-bit versions.

There are three special cases during encryption. First, you can't encrypt a file that's already been encrypted. That seems reasonable, but I don't know of any technical reason to prohibit it. Using the example above, you can't encrypt test_txt.rxf to get test_txt_rxf.rxf.

Second, if you encrypt a folder, all of the files in that folder (and any sub-folders) will be encrypted (including hidden files, but excluding encrypted files). That's very useful, as it allows you to encrypt all of your documents at once if you wish.

Finally, you can't encrypt files in the operating system's ROM image, although why you'd want to is anybody's guess.

Those exceptions led to the only real problem I found with encryption. If the file (or all of the files) you have selected can't be encrypted, the Encrypt Files icon should be grayed out.

The sixth icon allows you to compress selected files into ZIP archives.

Add to Archive Dialog

The Mode and Level drop-down lists are the same as those discussed in the Zip settings tab section. For some reason, there's no setting here to override the Verify integrity after archive modification setting; if verification is off, you'll have to verify the integrity of the ZIP file using the context menu once the archive is created.

Compression seemed reasonably fast. As a test, I was able to compress all 5,465,077 bytes of the My Documents folder in about 45 seconds using Normal Compression; the resulting file was 3,108,026 bytes.

As the next image shows, ZIP files are displayed just like folders in Resco Explorer.

Viewing A ZIP File

You can see that I'm able to browse files in the Flash sub-folder of the ZIP file.

The seventh icon displays the Send To menu, allowing you to send files to folders on your Pocket PC or to other users.

Advanced Toolbar Send To Menu

The Add/Delete... action allows you to add new folders to the Send To menu.

Organize "Send To" Folders Dialog

To add a folder, just select the folder you want to send something to in the Folder field — it can be any folder on your device or network. If you don't like the default name in the Name field, choose another one. Finally, tap the Add New button. That will create a destination where the file itself will be sent. If you want to put a shortcut to the file there instead, ensure the Send as shortcut check box is checked.

Folders added will show up in the list. You can use the Move Folder Up and Move Folder Down buttons to rearrange the list, or the Delete Folder button to remove an item from the Send To... menu.

One thing I wish you could do with the Send To... menu is send files to a program, like you can do in desktop Windows. Currently, you can only send files or shortcuts to files to another folder, but I often want to open a file in a text editor, even though that file is associated with another program.

You can open files with any program using the Open with... command, but that requires many more taps. Making the Organize "Send To" Folders dialog a tabbed dialog, similar to my suggestion for the Organize Favorites dialog, would easily allow this.

The next section in the Send To... menu allows you to send file to another user using E-mail, Bluetooth or Infrared. Resco Explorer will start the appropriate program for you; for example, if you select E-mail Recipient..., Inbox will be started with the selected file added as an attachment.

The final section of the menu are the folders already defined as locations to send files or shortcuts to. The two shown in the menu, My Documents and Start Menu as Shortcut, are thoughtfully included when you install Resco Explorer.

One problem with the Send To button is that it occasionally gets disabled. If you select an item that can't be sent (My Device, anything in the registry, the My Network root, etc.), the button is grayed out. This means that you can't access the Add/Delete... action; you have to select something that is sendable.

The correct way to work would be to never disable the Send To button, but disable all actions except for the Add/Delete... action if the selected item can't be sent.

There's another problem lurking there, too. If you select the My FTP Locations root, the Send To button is active, but so are the My Documents and Start Menu as Shortcut actions. When I chose My Documents, nothing was added there, so I believe those actions should be disabled.

The eighth icon displays the Network menu.

Advanced Toolbar Network Menu

From here, you can map drives on your network or remove previously added drives. Selecting Map drive... will open the Share Network Disk dialog and search your network for computers you can access. If computers are found, you should see a display similar to the following image.

Share Network Disk Dialog With Computers Found

Once you select a drive to map, you may be asked to log in.

Network Log On Dialog

Once that's done, you'll see the network drive at the bottom of the Network menu. You can see that I've mapped one drive on my laptop.

If no computers are found on your network, you'll get an error, as shown below.

Share Network Disk Dialog With No Computers Found

That was where I had one problem with Resco Explorer. If I was connected to my network using WiFi, my computer would show up just fine. However, if I was connected to my computer via ActiveSync through my cradle, I'd get the error dialog. This may be because ActiveSync seems to use its own IP address, and is documented in the help, but it would be nice if there were some workaround, as there is for FTP (as you'll see later). However, even when I used the settings dialog shown below to change my IP address from ActiveSync's weird one to my normal one, I still couldn't connect.

Network Settings Dialog

The Unmap Drive... action allows you to remove a drive using the dialog shown below.

Disconnect Network Connection Dialog

The ninth icon displays a subset of the View menu.

Advanced Toolbar View Menu

All of these actions are the same as those in the View menu.

Folder Bar

The Folder Bar provides a quick way to navigate folders and access your favorites.

Folder Bar

The left side shows you what folder you're in. If you're in something other than a folder (a ZIP file, the registry, an FTP site, etc.), it will show you that. If you tap the name shown there, you'll get a drop-down window displaying the folder hierarchy, as the following image shows.

Folder Bar Folder Tree

If you keep the Folder Bar displayed, this allows you to hide the Tree View and make the File View as big as possible. When you want to move to a new folder, you just tap the folder name, and navigate that way. It's sort of like the built-in File Explorer, only much more convenient because the entire tree is displayed.

Tapping the icon on the right side of the Folder Bar gives you quick access to your Favorites.

Folder Bar Favorites Menu

These items work just like the ones in the Favorites cascading menu in the File menu.

My Device Context Menu

If you tap and hold the My Device folder, you'll get the context menu shown below.

My Device Context Menu

The Paste and Paste shortcut actions are the standard ones.

The Properties action displays the dialog shown below.

My Device Properies Dialog

The General tab shows you basic information about the device. The Total space field only reflects storage memory, not program memory or any storage cards in the device.

The Storage and Battery tabs are the same as those in the System Info applicaton, and are shown there.

Folder Context Menu

If you tap and hold a folder, you'll get the context menu shown below.

Folder Context Menu

The Send To action displays a cascading menu that is basically the same as the Advanced Toolbar's Send To menu, but without the Add/Delete... action, as the following image shows.

Folder Send To Menu

One very minor nit is that the Bluetooth Recipient.. action only has two periods in the ellipsis, not three. More troubling, every now and then, I'd get a slightly different Send To menu without the Bluetooth Recipient.. action, almost as if Resco Explorer couldn't tell I had a Bluetooth iPAQ. In the following image, you can see that this happened on the same folder used for the previous image.

Folder Send To Menu Without Bluetooth

As Bluetooth is only supported for iPAQs, this probably won't be an issue for other Pocket PCs, but I do wonder why it happened.

The Encryption action displays a cascading menu allowing you to encrypt or decrypt the files in the folder.

Folder Encryption Menu

The Encrypt... action is the same as the Encrypt Files button in the Advanced Toolbar. The Decrypt... action will display the Decrypt File(s) dialog shown below.

Decrypt File(s) Dialog

To decrypt the files, just enter the password used to encrypt them and tap the Decrypt button. If you want, you can also delete the encrypted files after they're decrypted to save space.

The Compress... action is the same as the Compress Files button in the Advanced Toolbar.

The Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste shortcut, Delete and Rename actions are all standard.

Selecting the Properties action displays the dialog shown below.

Folder Properies Dialog

You can see how many files and subfolders are in the folder, and how much space they take. You also get a graphical representation of how much memory the folder takes on your device. The number shown to the right of the bar is the total device memory, not just storage memory as in the My Device folder Properties dialog.

Storage Card Context Menu

If you tap and hold a storage card folder, you'll get the context menu shown below.

Storage Card Context Menu

The Send To, Encryption and Compress... actions work the same as they do for folders.

The Format... action allows you to format a storage card using the dialog shown below.

Format Flash Card Dialog

You can choose which card you want to format (the selected one is the default). Tapping the Format button will give you the warning message shown below.

Format Flash Card Warning

Tapping the Yes button will format the card.

It would be useful to be able to specify how you want to format the card (FAT16, FAT32, etc.). I couldn't find any information about how the card was formatted, even though I did format my old SanDisk 128 MB SD card. I asked Resco about this, and they said they just send a format command to the driver responsible for the memory card and the driver chooses the format.

The Copy, Paste and Paste shortcut actions are all standard.

Selecting the Properties action displays the dialog shown below.

Storage Card Properies Dialog

The General tab shows you how many files and folders are on the card, as well as the total space on the card, how much is used and how much is free.

The Format tab is the same as the Format dialog, allowing you to format the card here, too.

File Context Menu

If you tap and hold a file, you'll get the context menu shown below.

File Context Menu

The View... action displays the file using Resco Explorer's built-in file viewer. As the following images show, you have up to six possible viewing options.

File Viewer ANSI Text View	File Viewer Unicode Text View
File Viewer Binary View	File Viewer Hex View
File Viewer Image View	File Viewer HTML View

The Tools menu is fairly straightforward, as the following image shows.

File Viewer Tools Menu

The toolbar icons for text files allow you to search for text in an ANSI or Unicode file and repeat the last search. The icons for images allow zooming out, zooming in, fitting the image to the screen and viewing the image at full resolution.

Interestingly, the file viewer seems to have its own HTML viewer; it certainly doesn't bring up Pocket Internet Explorer to view the file. You can't search for text in an HTML file unless you view it as text.

The file viewer is a very convenient way to look at a file in textual or hex formats, but you can't edit the file in the viewer. It would be very nice to allow modifying files in the text or hex viewers, but I realize this could cause problems, so there should also be an option that had to be enabled to allow editing. It would also be nice if you could edit graphics, but I doubt that Resco wants to compete with their own Picture Viewer.

The Open action in the file context menu opens the file with the application associated with the file's type. If no application is associated with the file, the following dialog will be displayed to allow you to choose one.

Associate Program Dialog

The dialog is self-explanatory — either type the program name (with full path information) in or use the ... button to browse for the program, decide if you want to always use this program to open the file or not, and press the OK button.

The only problem is the misspelling of "extension" at the top of the dialog.

The Open with... action allows you to open the file with the any application you want. It uses the same dialog as the Run... command in the File menu.

The only problem I had with this is that it takes too many taps to get to the program you want to use. The dialog could be modified to use fewer taps if it included a drop-down list of the programs you most recently used here. That would prevent you from having to always browse for the program to open the file with or having to type it in yourself.

Also, Open With... might require fewer taps if the Program Files folder were always shown in the Location field. Alternatively, maybe the Program Files folder could be shown if the selected folder did not contain any executables; if the selected folder did contain executables, that folder would be shown in the Location field. At the very least, an option could be used to set the desired behavior.

The Associate with... action allows you associate a program with a file type (and to change the existing association if installing a program changed one you had). It uses the Associate Program dialog shown above.

I do wish there was a file association action in the main menu that showed all of the program associations, like in desktop Windows. That would make it easy to add or change several items at once.

All of the remaining items in the file context menu need no further explanation, but I will show the dialog the Properties action displays.

File Properties Dialog

My Network Context Menus

For the most part, mapped network drives are treated like storage cards, folders on those drives behave like any other folder on your Pocket PC and files on the drives work just like files on your device. The following figure shows a mapped drive and some folders in it.

Mapped Drive View

The context menu for My Network is shown below.

My Network Context Menu

All of the actions have been covered previously, but there are a couple of things that should be mentioned.

First, notice that the Paste and Paste shortcut actions are enabled. This is an error, becauase My Network isn't a file container. If you try those actions, you'll just get error messages.

Second, the Properties action displays the following dialog.

My Network Properties Dialog

One interesting thing about the dialog is that it displays the number of folders and files on all mapped drives (assuming you want to wait for the count to complete).

The context menu for a mapped drive is the same as for My Network, as the following image shows.

Mapped Drive Context Menu

The only thing that needs to be shown is the dialog the Properties action displays.

Mapped Drive Properties Dialog

The context menus for folders and files on mapped drives are exactly the same as those for folders and files on the Pocket PC, as shown below.

Mapped Drive Folder Context Menu

Mapped Drive File Context Menu

The properties dialogs are the same, too, so I won't show them here.

My Registry Context Menus

Context menus here just duplicate those in the Registry Editor, so I'll cover them in that section.

My FTP Locations Context Menu

The My FTP Locations root contains any FTP connections you've defined. The context menu is fairly simple, as the next image shows.

My FTP Locations Context Menu

New FTP Session..., as its name implies, allows you to define a new FTP connection. When you do that, you'll see the dialog shown below.

New FTP Session Details Dialog

Session lets you name the FTP connection. Host is the domain of the FTP server. Port is the FTP port to use, which is usually 21. Login is your user name, or "guest" if logging in anonymously. Password is the password for the user name. Local Dir allows you to set the default folder on your Pocket PC where uploads come from and downloads are placed. Remote Dir allows you to set the default folder on the host where uploads are placed and downloads come from. Anonymous allows connecting without a user name and password, filling in the Login field with "anonymous" and the Password field with some unknown text. Passive forces the client to open the data connection, not the server. You may need to use it if you're behind a firewall. You also need to use it if you want to connect while using ActiveSync, but even then you can only do a few actions before you have to disconnect and reconnect to FTP.

FTP Session Context Menu

Once a session is created, you can access it using the session context menu.

FTP Session Context Menu

The Connect action attempts to connect to the remote host and log in with the details provided when you created the session. During the connection process, you'll see the dialog shown here.

Connecting To FTP

Once connected, the session entry will change slightly, and you'll see files in the List View, as the following image shows.

Active FTP Connection

When connected, the Connect action in the context menu is changed to Disconnect.

The Paste action allows you to upload a file to the default remote directory. In fact, using copy and paste is the only way to upload files; there's no Upload action and no way to add a remote directory to the Send To menu. I really think allowing a remote directory to be added to the Send To menu would help; otherwise, copying multiple files can mean having to repeatedly switch from the My Device root to the My FTP Locations root and back.

Delete removes an FTP session from the My FTP Locations root.

Properties displays the Session Details dialog, as shown below.

Session Details Dialog

This is basically the same dialog you get when creating a connection, except that you aren't allowed to change the Session field. That seems like a silly restriction to me; if you want to change the session name, you have to delete the connection and recreate it. (OK, you can cheat and edit the registry to change the name in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Resco\My FTP Locations key, but that's a power user trick, and you shouldn't have to.) There should either be a Rename action (like registry keys have) or you should be able to change the session name here.

FTP Folder Context Menu

When you select a folder in an FTP session, any files in the folder will be shown in the List View. If you tap and hold the folder, you'll get the context menu shown below.

FTP Folder Context Menu

Download will download the folder and its files to the folder you set up in Local Dir. Download To... is similar to Download, but allows you to choose the folder you want to download the folder to. You can also specify other FTP options, as seen in the dialog below.

FTP Download Dialog

One problem I experienced while downloading was occasionally getting an error message that said the transfer was complete. This message is shown below.

FTP Transfer Complete Error

Selecting Yes left a file named index.html.RFTP on my Pocket PC. I could easily rename the file to remove the RFTP extension, and the file seemed to be complete. So, if the transfer worked, why did I get an error?

The remaining actions are fairly obvious, although I will show the dialog you get when you select Properties.

FTP Folder Properties Dialog

One problem with folders is that there's no way to move higher in the remote directory hierarchy than the directory you set in the Remote Dir field. You'll notice I set my remote directory to public_html, because that's the directory Web pages are served from. However, this means that I can't get to my user directory one level up.

I could have just used the root for my remote directory, but that would mean I'd have to select the public_html directory every time I wanted to upload a Web page. Having an action that moved up a directory level would be very useful, although I'm not sure how that would be represented in the Tree View. Maybe providing a method for entering some FTP commands (like ..) would help; in fact, allowing more commands would make this a more powerful FTP client.

FTP File Context Menu

The FTP file context menu is almost like the FTP folder version, as the image below shows.

FTP File Context Menu

All of the actions have been covered, but the dialog displayed by the Properties action is worth viewing.

FTP File Properties Dialog

Not only are the usual file details displayed, but also the UNIX file permissions. Unfortunately, the permissions can't be modified, which would be a very useful feature. It seems that simply changing the plus symbols to check boxes would allow this (although the program would have to properly format and issue the necessary chmod command).

ZIP Archive Context Menu

As previously mentioned, ZIP archives appear like folders in Resco Explorer.

ZIP Archive Tree

The context menu for a ZIP archive is very similar to a folder's context menu, as the following image shows.

ZIP Archive Context Menu

There are only two differences — the Duplicate action, which makes sense because the archive is really a file, and the ZIP Archive menu, which has sensibly replaced the Compress... action.

The Extract to... action allows you to uncompress the archive, as the following dialog illustrates.

Extract From Archive Dialog

You can select a folder to extract files to in the Extract to field or create a new folder using the New Folder... button. Like desktop Zip programs, you can also choose to preserve the folder structure of the archive or not.

You can also control whether or not files in the archive will replace existing files on your device. The list contains the same options as discussed in the Zip settings section, which is where the default is specificed.

The Comment... action displays the Archive Comment dialog, allowing you to add a comment to the ZIP file.

Archive Comment Dialog

Finally, the Verify Archive action checks the integrity of the ZIP file and displays a message indicating whether it's valid or not.

Back in the context menu proper, notice that you can cut and copy from an archive or paste into one. That makes them easier to work with, because you don't have to mess around with the compression dialogs. Using the clipboard with archive files uses the options set using the Zip tab in the Options dialog.

The Properties action shows you a cross between folder information and file information, with statistics about the compression added.

Archive Properties Dialog

The Comment tab just shows the Archive Comment dialog.

ZIP Archive Folder Context Menu

Because ZIP archives are treated similarly to folders, you can see the folders that were compressed in them. The following image shows the context menu for a folder in the archive.

ZIP Archive Folder Context Menu

All of the actions are fairly straightforward, so I'll only show the dialog displayed when Properties is selected.

ZIP Archive Folder Properties Dialog

The Archive and Comment tabs are the same as in the Archive Properties Dialog.

ZIP Archive File Context Menu

Just like folders in the archive, you can also see the files compressed in them. The following image shows the context menu for a file in the archive.

ZIP Archive File Context Menu

Again, these actions have been covered before, so I'll only show the dialog displayed when Properties is selected.

ZIP Archive File Properties Dialog

Once again, the Archive and Comments tab are the same as in the Archive Properties Dialog.

You can put one ZIP file inside of another, but nested ZIP files won't be treated like folders, as the following image shows.

Nested ZIP Files

Note that Flash.zip shows in the List View, but not in the Tree View. If you attempt to view or open a nested ZIP archive, those operations will be done in the $RZipTmp$ folder in the Temp folder. The following image shows what happened when I double-tapped the Flash.zip file.

Opening A Nested ZIP File

Registry Editor

For those who don't know, the registry is where Windows CE and many programs store important configuration information. You normally can't see the registry on your Pocket PC, but the Registry Editor lets you view — and modify — it. You should do this with caution, though, because changing or deleting some items can cause your Pocket PC to die, and you'll need to do a hard reset to recover. In fact, unless you're comfortable rooting around in system files, you shouldn't use the Registry Editor. You should also ensure that the My Registry add-in is turned off in Resco Explorer.

Warnings aside, there are many useful things you can do in the registry. Philippe Majerus has compiled a list of tweaks, and even written a free registry editor.

Resco Registry Editor

There are only two differences that I found between the Registry Editor and Resco Explorer's My Registry root when it comes editing the registry. First, and most obvious, you can only edit the registry; with Resco Explorer, you can browse files, the network and FTP, too. Second, the Registry Editor doesn't have the Advanced Toolbar, which allows the Find action to be put in the main toolbar.

The Registry Editor is the second most complex program in the suite, so, as I did for the file explorer, I'm going split this section up into several sections based on the menus and toolbars you can use:

File Menu
Edit Menu
View Menu
Toolbar
Registry Context Menu
Registry HKEY Context Menu
Registry Key Context Menu
Registry Value Context Menu

File Menu

As the following image shows, the File menu is basically the same as Resco Explorer's.

Registry Editor File Menu

The only two differences are the cascading New menu and the Import... action.

The New menu allows creating new registry keys and values. The keys are represented as folders, and can contain as many values as needed. The new key dialog is shown below.

New Key Dialog

Values can be one of four types — String, Multi Line String, Binary (or Hex, more accurately) and DWORD (a 32-bit double word).

String Value Dialog	Multi Line Value Dialog
Binary Value Dialog	DWORD Value Dialog

If you actually entered that data, you'd see the registry information shown in the next image.

Added Registry Data

Notice that every key has a value named (Default); this is standard, and the value can't be deleted or renamed.

The Import... action allows importing registry files that you have exported. Selecting Import... displays one of the dialogs shown below.

Import Open Dialog (Explorer Mode)

Import Open Dialog (Tree Mode)

At it's simplest, You just find the folder your registry files are in, select one and tap the OK button to import it. However, there are a few options you have here.

The IrDA menu, shown below, allows you to receive a registry file via beaming.

Import Dialog IrDA Menu

The View menu allows you to control the display of the registry files to be imported.

Import Dialog View Menu

The first toolbar button, Explorer Mode On/Off, allows you toggle the Folder drop-down list between the standard Explorer My Documents version and a tree view similar to that in Resco Explorer's Folder Bar. It also displays two additional toolbar buttons to move up a level in the tree and to create a new folder (although why somebody would create a new folder when trying to import a file is beyond me).

The Network toolbar button allows searching your network for files to import. The View toolbar button allows displaying the files as icons or in a list and sorting them. Those actions should also be in the View menu, I think.

One problem with the File menu is that you can select any of the New actions even when the My Registry root is selected. Nothing happens when you do, though, because you can only add keys and values in other keys. Instead of having nothing happen, the New actions should be disabled if My Registry is selected.

The Import... action is one big feature that distinguishes the Resco Registry Editor from the free one I mentioned earlier, which can export but not import.

Edit Menu

The Edit menu is almost identical to the one in Resco Explorer, as the following image shows.

Registry Editor Edit Menu

The only differences are the omission of a Paste shortcut action, because shortcuts don't make sense in the registry, and the addition of a Find next action, to find the next matching element after a Find. However, the Find... action displays a different dialog, as shown in the following image.

Search Registry Dialog

You can search for a specified string in keys, value names or the value data itself.

View Menu

The View menu is also similar to its counterpart in Resco Explorer.

Registry Editor View Menu

There is no Show Columns cascading menu, no actions to view icons or details and the Arrange Icons cascading menu only has two items in it. This makes sense, because you always want to see the value names and data, so filtering columns or showing icons wouldn't make any sense.

Toolbar

As mentioned above, the toolbar is almost identical to the toolbar in Resco Explorer.

Registry Editor Toolbar

There is no button to display the Advanced Toolbar, so the Find Files button was moved to the toolbar (although you aren't really finding "files"). None of the items really need any further explanation.

My Registry Context Menu

The context menu displayed when you tap and hold the My Registry root is shown below.

My Registry Context Menu

The Import... action was covered above. The Export... action displays one of the dialogs shown below.

Export Open Dialog (Explorer Mode)

Export Open Dialog (Tree Mode)

You can create a new folder with the New Folder action. The Explorer Mode On/Off toolbar button toggles the Folder drop-down list between the standard My Documents selection method and the tree method used in the Resco Explorer Folder Bar.

The Export... action will export all values in the selected key and its sub-keys. There is no way to just export the values in the selected key without getting the sub-keys, but I think there should be. A check box saying Export sub-keys would make this easy.

Registry HKEY Context Menu

Tapping and holding one of the registry HKEY root keys displays the context menu shown here.

Registry HKEY Context Menu

All of the items have been discussed previously, and won't be covered again.

Registry Key Context Menu

Tapping and holding a non-root key displays the context menu shown here.

Registry Key Context Menu

Again, all of the menu items have been discussed previously.

Registry Value Context Menu

When a value in the List View is tapped and held, the context menu in the next image is displayed.

Registry Value Context Menu

All of the actions are standard, except for Modify, which lets you change the data in a value. Each value type has a dialog that looks like the dialog displayed creating a new value of the same type, except that the Name field is read-only. If you want to change the name of a value, you have to use the Rename action.

You can't rename the (Default) value, even though the menu item is active. If you try, you get an error message saying the source value does not exist. This means that Rename should not be in the context menu if the (Default) value is selected.

You might think that Cut, Copy and Delete should also be removed from the context menu for (Default) items, but they can be used. You can copy one (Default) item to another key, and any value will be copied. Deleting a (Default) item is the only way to reset the value so that "(value not set)" is displayed. Cutting and pasting an item will reset the (Default) value in the source key, and copy whatever value it had to the target key. These actions are non-intuitive, which is why I mentioned them.

There is no way to export just the selected values in a key; you have to export all the values in a key (and its sub-keys, as mentioned above). Adding an Export... action to the registry value context menu would allow exporting just the selected values, and would be very useful when you added one new value in a key with many sub-keys or values.

System Info

The System Info program is the simplest part of Resco Explorer. It just gives you the ability to see your memory and battery status in one place, as the next two images show.

System Info Storage Page

System Info Battery Page

It's nice to be able to see the status of all of my storage in one place. Not only can I see Storage and Program memory at a glance, but the iPAQ File Store and three memory cards. This means it supports iPAQ dual-slot sleeves perfectly.

About the only thing I'd wish for here was the ability to show the status of an external battery in an iPAQ expansion sleeve. In iPAQs released before they had backup batteries, the external battery status was shown in the Power settings applet; after backup batteries were added, the external battery status was moved to the Expansion Pack settings applet. This means that you have to check two places to see all of your battery information, and System Info could simplify this.

I'd also change the storage card graphics, but just because I'm picky. The graphic appears to show a SmartMedia card, which I don't believe any Pocket PC supports natively. A graphic of a Secure Digital card would make more sense.

Desktop Components

As mentioned in the installation section, you can install two components on your PC — the Cryptographic Extension and the SendTo Extension. These will be covered in the next two sections.

Cryptographic Extension

The Crpytographic Extension is similar to the encryption provided on the Pocket PC. When you right-click on a folder or file, you'll see a Resco Crypting action in the context menu. Selecting it displays a cascading menu as shown below.

Resco Crypting Menu

If you select Encrypt, you'll get the dialog shown next.

Desktop Encrypt File(s) Dialog

As on the Pocket PC, all you have to do is specify a password to encrypt files. Encrypting a file produces a new .rxf file with the original file's extension added to the new file's name. For example, if you encrypt test.txt, the encrypted file will be called test_txt.rxf. You can specify whether or not you want to delete the original file as part of the encryption process.

You can also choose what encryption method you want to use by clicking the Settings button. This will display the dialog shown below.

Desktop Encryption Settings Dialog

There are several encryption providers listed, more than the two I had on my Pocket PC. However, if you want to be able to encrypt and decrypt the same files on both your desktop and your Pocket PC, you should stick to the Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider or the Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider.

The Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider provides "strong" encryption, but may not be available in all locations. Encryption algorithms include the following:

RC2 (128-bit)
DES (56-bit)
3DES Two Key (112-bit)
3DES (168-bit)

Interestingly, the RC5 (128-bit) encryption method found on the Pocket PC is not listed here.

The Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider setting provides "normal" encryption. Encryption algorithms include the following:

RC2 (40-bit)
DES (56-bit)

As I mentioned, I had several other cryptographic providers listed, but they all seemed to provide the same methods as the Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider did.

As on the Pocket PC, encrypting a folder encrypts all of the files in that folder, and you can't encrypt a file that's already been encrypted.

To decrypt files, just double-click on an encrypted file or select Decrypt from the context menu. Either way, you'll get the dialog shown in the next image.

Desktop Decrypt File(s) Dialog

To decrypt the files, just enter the password used to encrypt them and tap the Decrypt button. If you want, you can also delete the encrypted files after they're decrypted to save space.

SendTo Extension

The SendTo Extension adds a simple method of sending a file to your Pocket PC, When you right-click on a folder or file, then click the Send To action, you'll see a My Device target, as shown in the following image.

Desktop Send To Menu

If you select the My Device target, you'll get the dialog shown below.

Select Destination Folder Dialog

Choose the folder you want to copy the files to, press the Send button and the files will be copied to your Pocket PC. This is a nice shortcut for sending files to your device.

One odd thing I noticed with both desktop extensions is that, after using one, I often couldn't bring another application to the foreground; Windows Explorer would remain as the top-most window, with the other applicaton coming up behind it. I would have to minimize Explorer in order to access the application I wanted again, and everything seemed to work normally after that. This problem didn't happen with all applications, but it was repeatable. Other context menu programs did not exhibit this same behavior, so it's not a system-wide problem.

Documentation &Help

As I mentioned above, when you install Resco Explorer, you'll get a screen showing what the toolbar buttons do with links to descriptions of those buttons. There's also a standard Help system you can get to by tapping the Start menu, then tapping the Help action. The image below shows the table of contents for the help file.

Help Table of Contents

The help could be a bit more extensive. For example, I couldn't find anything in the help about formatting storage cards, the various compression modes or the various encryption algorithms.

Another omission was in the help on the Options dialog. There are eight options pages in the dialog, but only seven in the help section; a section on FTP settings was missing. In fact, I couldn't find any mention of FTP in the help (and I did a complete search)!

Also, the help sounds like it was written by a non-native English speaker at times. Here's one example from the Registry Editor section: "If your tree do not display registry root, open Option dialog and check 'My Registry' at the Add-Ins page."

There is an online user's manual available in PDF form, but it appears to be the same information as the help file. Unless you want to read the help on your PC, I wouldn't bother with the manual.

Resco also provides a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on their Web site. Unfortunately, the current version does not list anything about FTP, either. I did E-mail Resco a question about using FTP with ActiveSync, and got back an answer in a few hours. The reply also mentioned that they were doing an FTP FAQ, so it may be up when this review is published.

Availability &Price

You can buy Resco Explorer from the Resco Web site. The Explorer product page is the best place to start. Resco Explorer 5.0 costs $24.95. Versions are also available for Handheld PCs and Smartphones. Each version seems to require a separate download, including the separate versions for Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002 and Windows Mobile 2003.

Resco also offers a bundle called the Resco Utility Package, which includes Resco Explorer, Resco Picture Viewer and Resco Task Manager for $29.95.

There is a 14-day free trial available. Resco offers free upgrades for one year, and 50% off after a year.

NOTE: In the interests of full disclosure, Resco provided me a free copy of Resco Explorer 2003 5.0 for this review.

Gotchas

There are a few minor problems in Resco Explorer, and several improvements I'd suggest. Problems are features that don't work as described, crashes or hangs, confusing user interface elements, problems in the documentation or help or anything that detracts from using the program. Suggestions are for features that work as described but could be better or new features that the program could implement. These will be covered in the next two sections.

Problems

I found several problems. The following list is roughly in order of importance.

Resco Explorer would occasionally hang up for me. I got freezes while registering, dragging a file and one other time.When that happened, I had to forcibly kill Resco Explorer. This was not repeatable for any given action, but it should be looked into.
You can't map network drives while connected via ActiveSync. There may not be anything that can be done about it, but it's still an issue.
You have to use Passive Mode to use FTP while connected via ActiveSync. Even then, you can only do a few transfers before you have to disconnect and reconnect.
While downloading files using FTP, I would occasionally get an error message that said the transfer was complete. As the file seemed to be complete, why did I get an error?
The function of the Feed to listbox button of the Find dialog is not obvious. Just allow the user to tap or double-tap the file in the search results list to open it (depending on your settings). Replace the Feed to listbox button with a Locate button which would return you to the List View with the selected file highlighted.
When compressing files, the various compression modes aren't obvious, and there's no information about them in the help. Perhaps the modes could be renamed to something clearer, but the help should definitely explain the differences.

Also, there's no way to override the Verify integrity after archive modification setting. There seems to be plenty of room on the Add To Archive dialog, so an override should be provided.

I realize that adding the override will cause the virtual keyboard to at least partially cover the OK and Cancel buttons, but that's better than having to cancel and go to the settings dialog to change (or just check) the default.
The "Overwrite Only Newer" option in the Extract From Archive dialog should be changed to "Overwrite Only Older". The current phrasing sounds like you'll overwrite newer files on your device with older files in the archive, but that's not what happens.
The help should be improved and proofread better. For example, there is absolutely no information about FTP in the help files.
The Set Default Options button restores the default options, discarding any changes you've made in the dialog, without asking for confirmation. There should be a message asking if you really want to reset the options.
Tappng OK on the Registration dialog without entering a registration code can confuse the user. Answering no to the question about repeating the registration makes the user wonder whether the program will still be registered or not. Addding a Cancel button to the Registration dialog will avoid confusing the user who just wants to view his registration information, but doesn't want to change anything.
The Send To button occasionally gets disabled. Selecting an item that can't be sent usually causes the button to be grayed out, preventing you from accessing the Add/Delete... action.

The Send To button should never be disabled; instead, everything but the Add/Delete... action should be disabled if the selected item can't be sent.

Also, selecting the My FTP Locations root or an FTP session name does not disable the My Documents and Start Menu as Shortcut actions, even though you can't really send those items anywhere.
Occasionally, the Send To context menu for a folder wouldn't display the Bluetooth Recipient.. action. This was intermittent, but I could reproduce it sometimes.

Also, the Bluetooth Recipient.. action only has two periods in the ellipsis, not three (like I said, I'm very picky).
The My Network context menu has Paste and Paste shortcut actions, but you can't paste anything there. These actions should only be displayed for drives, folders and files.
The Open Folder Shortcut with Resco Explorer option is misnamed. It allows you to decide whether shortcuts to folders you create are opened in Resco Explorer or as Windows folders; once the shortcut is created, changing the setting has no affect on what program opens the shortcut. The option should be renamed Create folder shortcuts to use Resco Explorer.
The program allows trying to encrypt files that it can't encrypt. For example, if you select an encrypted file, the Encrypt Files Advanced Toolbar button should be grayed out, as should the Encrypt... action in any context menus. If multiple files are selected, where some, but not all, can be encrypted, the program should not disable the encryption actions, of course.

Similarly, if no selected files are encrypted (or no files in a selected folder are encrypted), the Decrypt... action in context menus should be disabled.
In the FTP Session Details dialog, you can't change the Session field. You either have to delete the session and recreate it with the new name or edit the registry to change the name. There should either be a Rename action (like the registry has) or you should be able to change the session name in the Session Details dialog (or both).
If My FTP Locations is selected in the Tree View, the New Folder action is equivalent to selecting New FTP Session..., but that action is already in the File menu. Either gray out the New Folder action in this case or create a new folder which can contain FTP connections. That latter option would allow users with a lot of FTP connections to organize them.
The Single/Multi selection action name is not clear, because it's not obvious which mode is active. It would be clearer if the action were simply called Multiple Selection Mode. That makes it obvious what a check means.

Alternatively, the action name could change depending on the mode. When single selection mode was active, the menu would display a Multiple Selection Mode action; when multiple selection mode was active, the menu would display a Single Selection Mode action. However, I tend not to like this method because it always shows the mode that is not active.
In the Registry Editor File menu, you can select any of the New actions even when the My Registry root is selected. Because you can't add keys or values there, the New actions should be disabled.
In the Registry Editor, the Rename context menu action is shown if the (Default) value is selected, even though trying to use it gives an error message saying the source value does not exist.
In the Registry Editor's Import dialog, the items in the View toolbar button should also be in the View menu.

Also, when the tree navigation method is chosen, I don't think there should be a New Folder button in the toolbar. I doubt many people are going to decide to create a new folder while trying to import a registry file.
The Show "My Device" option on the Add-Ins tab of the Options dialog is permanently grayed out, and should be deleted.
After using the desktop extensions, I often couldn't bring another application to the foreground. Clicking an application in the task bar would bring it up behind Windows Explorer, and the only way to get the application to the front would be to minimize Explorer.
Installing the program updates your Favorites with a link to Resco's mobile site. This should be an option, especially since the link is just ads for other Resco products.
There should be a separator bar above the Receive and Run... actions in the File menu if an FTP item is selected. That will be consistent with the other versions of the File menu.
"Extension" is misspelled at the top of the program association dialog.

Suggestions

There are several things I would suggest to improve the program.

Besides folders, the Favorites menu should also allow programs and files to be accessed. Making the Organize Favorites dialog a tabbed dialog, with Folders, Programs and Files tabs, would make this easy.
The Send To mechanism should be more flexible. Currently, you can only send files or shortcuts to files to another folder on your Pocket PC or network. You should be able to send items to FTP folders, too.

Also, you should be able to send files to programs, just like you can in desktop Windows. Making the Organize "Send To" Folders dialog a tabbed dialog, similar to my suggestion for the Organize Favorites dialog, would easily allow this.

You can open files with any program using the Open with... command, but that requires many more taps. You can also use the file viewer if you only want to view a file as text, but you won't be able to modify it.
Speaking of the Open with... dialog, it could be made to use fewer taps if it included a drop-down list of the programs you most recently used there. That would prevent you from having to always browse for the program to open the file with or having to type it in yourself.

Also, Open With... might require fewer taps if the Program Files folder were always shown in the Location field. Alternatively, maybe the Program Files folder could be shown if the selected folder did not contain any executables; if the selected folder did contain executables, that folder would be shown in the Location field. At the very least, an option could be used to set the desired behavior.
The file viewer should allow modifying a file, at least in text or hex formats (limited graphical editing would be nice, too). I realize this could cause problems, so there should also be an option that had to be enabled to allow editing.
There should be a file association dialog available from the menu bar. This would make it easier to change associations because you wouldn't have to find a file of the type you want. It would also allow you to delete associations for file types you no longer use. It should show all of the program associations, like in desktop Windows, making it easy to add or change several items at once.
In the Find dialog, eliminate the Find text button and dialog. Add a Text combo box on the main Find dialog, and add a Text section to the Advanced tab containing the Whole words only and Case sensitive check boxes. Also consider adding some other criteria, like Starts with and Ends with.
Add support to select what font is used in the File Explorer. Also, add a method to select the font color and attributes based on a file's type. For example, allow showing folders in bold, normal files in normal font and hidden files in red italic text.
Allow the user to specify how a storage card should be formatted (FAT16, FAT32, etc.).
Allow modifying remote file permissions in an FTP session. Changing the plus symbols to check boxes in the file Properties dialog seems fairly straight-forward.
Allow entering FTP commands, especially ones allowing you to move higher up in the remote directory hierarchy than the default directory in the FTP session.
In the Registry Editor, allow exporting only the values in the selected key without getting the values in the sub-keys. A check box saying Export sub-keys on the Export dialog would make this easy.

Also, allow exporting just the values selected in the List View for a key. Adding an Export... action to the registry value context menu would accomplish this.
In the System Info Battery page, display the status of any external batteries attached to an iPAQ expansion sleeve.
Create an add-in for a task manager. Many Pocket PC's don't include a task manager, and adding a task manager seems like a decent fit. In fact, DEXplor does this (which is where I got this suggestion from).

There could be a fifth root type for tasks, with columns including task name, executable path, CPU time and CPU percent usage.
Display an arrow in the column header showing the column sorted on and the sort order. This would be more like Windows.
In the System Info Storage page, change the storage card graphics from Smartmedia cards to Secure Digital cards.

Not all of those are important, of course, but all are worthy of considering, I think.

Conclusions

Despite the long list of problems and suggestions mentioned above, I think Resco Explorer is an excellent file browser. I don't believe that most of those issues will be problems for the average user.

With built-in file viewing, ZIP file support, encryption, storage card formatting. FTP capabilities and a Registry editor, it's also a lot more than a file browser. In fact, you might even be able to replace several other programs with Resco Explorer. While it is a bit pricy, especially given the free competition out there, if you look at it as being seven programs in one, it's not that bad a value (if you use all of the functions).

Rating Resco Explorer on the typical five-star scale, I give it 4.5 stars. If Resco fixes the problems and implements most of my suggestions, I'd give it 5 stars. I now use it instead of Pocket Explorer, which says a lot. There's a reason it won the Pocket PC Magazine 2003 Best Software Award for File Management Programs.

Post any comments about this in our forums.

NOTE: This review was originally written for pocketnow.com.

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