http://www.flexense.com/flextk/
Reviewed July 2008

What’s It Do?

FlexTk is an advanced file management toolkit allowing one to search and classify files, scan one or more disks or directories and apply rule-based, file organizing or data migration policies, synchronize files and directories, monitor one or more disks or directories, analyze storage utilization, copy large amounts of files in a fault-tolerant way, identify duplicate files and free-up wasted storage space. All file operations are available through a centralized and easy-to-use GUI application with a built-in file navigator allowing one to execute any required command in a single mouse click.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1. Most aspects of this feature-rich file management program performed as promised, but the Search feature did not work well.

Reviewer 2. This program has very powerful features to help you to find, organize, and sort files on your drives. The utility of FlexTk Pro was severely compromised in my hands due to the lack of help associated with the working windows. I frequently found myself in the middle of an operation, seeking orientation, clarification, and guidance but finding either none or not enough.
The best source of guidance was their user manual which is available as a separate .PDF download. Unfortunately, the manual often seems to be written based on an assumption that the user knows more than they do. For example, section 1.1 of the manual states:

“The FlexTk file management toolkit is capable of scanning disks, network shares and enterprise storage systems, classifying all the existing files and organizing them into a categorized file hierarchy.”

I am sure that the writer understands whether the actual files will be changed or if there will be some changes made to a database which references the files, but as a new user, I was unable to discern the basics of what was actually happening before the writer moved on to the details of the operations. Similar confusion seemed to appear almost every time I tried a new function. Even where there was a “?” box in a window, clicking on it simply resulted in a “universal no symbol” being displayed (the circle with the diagonal slash).

Reviewer 3. Yes, It worked very well in all my trials.

Reviewer 4. Yes, FlexTk Pro is a complete file management system that provides ways to handle files that do not exist in Explorer or My Computer of Windows.

Reviewer 5. Yes. For some time I have been looking for a file management program that could effectively replace the Windows Explorer (the file manager, not the Web browser) program that comes bundled with Windows. Over time, I found and installed a number of programs to fill gaps, holes or weaknesses in Explorer. In fact, in my Program Files Directory, there is a special Folder that I have for these programs. The Flexense people have taken on the challenge, and developed – perhaps not a thoroughbred Arabian, but at least a good race horse. It takes over many of the feebler areas of Explorer, so the old grey mare can rest more often in the stable while FlexTk struts its stuff.

Reviewer 6. Yes. FlexTk is an advanced file management utility that is more of a file management toolkit than just a single utility. It offers a full compliment of file management tools including folder sync, duplicate file search, temp file cleanup, storage utilization, file search, data migration, high speed data stream file copy, and advanced file organization. It is capable of scanning disks and network shares, classifying all files, and organizing them into a categorized hierarchy. It automatically categorizes files by general type (e.g. multimedia files, executables, documents, etc.) and then allows the user to drill down further to view results for individual file types and eventually a list of all within the group. FlexTk automatically recognizes more than 2,000 file types and allows the user to browse or export the file hierarchy, perform various actions on specific files or groups of files and physically reorganize the files based on a defined list of rules or policies the user creates. I found the program’s Web site to be refreshingly professional with no exaggerated claims or hyperbole.

Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1. Yes, for the most part the procedure was pretty quick and straightforward. I was also pleased that the installation process offers the option of installing a desktop icon, unlike some programs that either fail to provide such an icon or put one on the desktop whether the user wants it or not. The one puzzling aspect of the installation process concerned the location of the product ID. I was asked for the location on my computer where the product ID should be exported. I specified which folder to use. To my dismay, a box popped up saying "The FlexTk Professional product ID successfully exported to C:/Documents and Settings/[username]/My Documents/FlexTk_professional_NPPRINLMNE_pid.flx," which was not the location I had requested. It turned out, however, that this information was incorrect: the product ID had in fact been exported to the location I had specified. Being able to find the product ID is important because one has to send it to the company in order to get an unlock file to turn the trial version into a registered copy.

Reviewer 2. Installation was straightforward but the product registration process was unusual. In order to register, it was necessary to find the registration function buried under “About FlexTk” in the help dropdown menu. Filling in one’s name and payment ID generates a file. Which must be emailed to obtain an unlock file by return e-mail. (The turnaround was quick.). The unlock file must then be imported into the registration form. That seems like an unusually cumbersome process.

Reviewer 3. Yes, it was a typical installation and the install size was 11.7 MB.

Reviewer 4. Yes. Installation of the 4 MB installation file was very quick and easy, and did not produce any conflicts with Windows or any other software already installed on my system.

Reviewer 5. Yes, it was a standard Windows installation, allowing me to place the program where I wanted, and gave me a choice of whether to include a desktop shortcut or not. Registration is a bit more complex than most programs. First, I had to enter an “id”, then export that Product id. That is saved as a Product ID file, which has to be sent to Flexense to send an unlock code. This code is entered into the program to finally register it. I had some difficulties with this process, which was somehow sent off track by the various servers between my own ISP and Flexense, and email messages were either delayed for long periods of time, or were completely lost in the ether. When messages did get through, though, Flexense Registration and Support people responded quickly, even on the weekend.

Reviewer 6. Yes, it was a surprisingly small 4.0MB download requiring only 25MB of disk space considering the program’s feature set and power, small enough for even someone with a slower connection to easily download. The program installs quickly and easily using the standard Installation Wizard and seems to integrate seamlessly with Windows. One other related feature worthy of mentioning here: updates, which are often, install easily by overwriting the existing program and automatically transferring one’s license and registration. Additionally, the program uninstalls cleanly and thoroughly leaving only a remarkably few empty registry entries, the mark of a well-written program and something that anyone who has nightmares trying to remove a program will appreciate.


Good points

Reviewer 1. For me, FlexTk Professional's strengths lie in its ability to clean up my computer. Its Duplicates feature enabled me to identify and clean up duplicate files. I was stunned to learn that over time I have managed to accumulate more than 26,000 duplicate files, i.e., files that contain identical data. These duplicate files were taking up more than 2 GB of space on my hard drive. The Duplicates feature also allowed me to see exactly which files were duplicates; the file sets were arranged in order of the amount of wasted space they occupied. I then could select which duplicates to deal with. Two options that would apply to all files were "oldest duplicates" and "newest duplicates." Alternatively, I could choose to enter each file set and manually select which duplicates I wanted to delete. Once I had selected the files, I could then choose to remove the selected duplicate files from my computer, move them to another location, or replace the duplicate files with links to the original file. It's possible also to run the Duplicates feature on a single directory or set of directories, or even on selected files within a directory. I was very impressed with both the speed and, especially, the accuracy of the duplicates detection. It identified duplicate files even when they had different file names and different locations on my hard drive.

Another feature of FlexTk that worked well for me was CleanUp. It scanned my hard drive, identified all the cache, history, and temporary files, and then allowed me to select the files I wanted to delete. Although other programs offer a similar feature, FlexTk seemed to uncover more files and to give me more control over which I kept and which I deleted.

Although the Duplicates and Cleanup features were the ones I found most useful, FlexTk offers many other tools designed to enable the user to organize and manage the data on one's computer. The "Analyze" tool provides an analysis of storage utilization, enabling the user to see where most files are located and to identify disk utilization hotspots. To be honest, I saw little need for this feature, but I imagine that some people might value it highly. More appealing to me is the "Classify" tool, which will classify files by file type and will show the user how much storage space each file category occupies. With various plug-ins that can be downloaded from the company's Web site, the "Classify" tool can also identify movie and video files, music and audio files, picture and image files, and hidden files in all of these categories. It can also classify files based on when they were last modified, created, or accessed, as well as how large they are. With all this information, it is easy to use the "Organize" tool to find, say, all music and audio files last accessed more than two years ago and move them to a different location. It is also possible to preview the results of an action or set of commands before actually executing them.

Another strength of the program is its tech support. There is a User's Manual that can be downloaded or used from the Web site, a Web-based User's Forum, and a Web form via which to request tech support from Flexense. The Company indicates that one should expect a response within 24 hours. The two times I submitted questions to tech support I received very helpful responses within a few hours.

The developers of this program are continually working to improve it. In the four months that I've had the program on my computer, four upgraded versions have been issued. Each version has added new features.

Reviewer 2. The “Cleanup” function ran quickly and found 0.5GB of files, common candidates for removal such as deleted files, temp files, cookies, etc. There were three classifications of safety which varied only in the type of searched files selected.

The “Organize” function was able to pull files with very specific criteria from a variety of drives/partitions/directories and copy them onto another drive. In my case, I copied all files created after a specific date, but they can also be copied according to their access date, modification date, file size, attributes, name, hex pattern, or the text contained within.

One can quickly and easily “Analyze” drives to discover which folders or programs are taking up the most space.

Reviewer 3. FlexTk is an advanced file management program that allows one to search and classify files, scan one or more disks or directories and apply rule-based, file organizing or data migration policies, synchronize files and directories, monitor one or more disks or directories, analyze storage utilization, copy large amounts of files, identify duplicate files and free-up wasted storage space. All file operations are available through a centralized and easy-to-use GUI application with a built-in file navigator allowing any required command to be executed in a single mouse click. It is relatively easy to use if one takes the time to figure out its operations and soon becomes quite useful in dealing with today’s file systems found on most computers. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 275,000 files on my main C: drive and Flex Tk had no problem working with them. Flex Tk Pro will export the results of many of its operations to a HTML, Excel .csv file or a text file. Tech support was very responsive. I sent a ticket via the on-line support site and they replied within a few hours asking for log file. I sent it and they answered my question in about an hour, something I consider stellar performance.

Reviewer 4. FlexTk Pro is a product that is applicable to both a private single user and enterprise systems with numerous networked users. The best features of FlexTk Pro would depend upon which user group the user falls into. My testing and comments of FlexTk Pro are from the perspective of a single private user.

FlexTk Pro’s extremely fast and accurate performance is its best feature.. I tested numerous similar Explorer-type functions of copying and moving files to internal and external drives. In each and every test the results were the same, FlexTk Pro performed the function much faster. In addition, FlexTk Pro has a fault tolerance system that will correct some copying errors by retrying the copy of the file, continues to copy other files in the copy job, and will advise what files cannot be copied. This feature alone would justify purchasing this program, but FlexTk Pro goes way beyond simple copying and moving files. FlexTk Pro allows the user to set up the way the files should be copied using many different variables not available when copying with Explorer or other file management programs. I found being able to overwrite the current file that was already in the destination folder extremely helpful and even more so without having to authorize each overwrite or replace action. This allowed a place to keep the latest version of a file in a single place. It also allows a time stamp to be placed on the copied file to indicate when the latest version was copied. Ownership and original attributes can be carried with the copy so the file functions as the original did. This helped with my photo files as I keep the original files as “read only” to prevent accidental altering of original photos when editing the photos. This with other commands allowed me to easily organize a folder containing my original photos in their protected formatting, something I have been putting off doing due to the time such a project would involve. I could save the setup to do this and repeat the process with just a few clicks. The list of options available in performing copying and/or moving of files is so long I wasn’t able to test every combination possible; however, every combination that I did test performed as I had selected in the options and did so without any need for further authorization or confirmation on my part once the procedure was started. This is a setup as-desired-and-start system, and the program will perform the desired task automatically. The limit on what FlexTk can do with files is dependent upon the user’s knowledge of what each option means in the function of a file.

The search function of FlexTk Pro goes way beyond what Windows has to offer and is a true search for the average user. Often a user can’t remember the name or where a file that he/she needs, but can remember when they created the file or what’s in the file. I tested these search functions and correctly found files using key phrases in the files even when some of those phrases were contained inside closed email files in Outlook Express’ storage folder. It correctly displayed a list of files that I had accessed within the last day. I especially like that it starts the display of found files while it is still searching, allowing the user to check to see if a file is the one wanted while it continue searching for more files that meet the selected search criteria. FlexTk Pro allows the user to perform other functions on the PC while continuing its operations in the background, thus not interfering with the user’s use of the PC.

The delete function is a true delete and wipes the files deleted. It should be used with caution as files deleted in FlexTk Pro are totally deleted and recovery from the Recycle bin is not possible. This delete function with wipe capability negates the need for other programs I have for the sole purpose of wiping the data from the HD when a file is to be completely deleted. Tests I performed with recovery-type programs to check the deletion of files deleted by FlexTk Pro showed that the data had been removed and was unrecoverable by simple file recovery methods.

The Duplicate file finder and the Disk clean up utility are functions found in other programs, but is very nice to have these included in this program. I like the options for the duplicate file finder that allow saving either the oldest or newest duplicate and the ability to move the files rather than delete them right away. The Disk clean up is very simple to use and while not as through as some dedicated disk cleaning utilities it does a nice and quick job. I like its user friendly selection of how deep the cleaning can be with Safe Normal and All selection choices as well as individual user selection. I do not like my cookies removed on a clean up as they are far more functional than harmful. Again, I was impressed with the speed in which this task was performed, a few seconds to locate the files, and even less time to get rid of them.

The Storage analysis function is neat to look at, but for a private end user I saw nothing more than informational. I could see in an enterprise use this would be a valuable tool.

Since FlexTk Pro doesn’t function like Windows Explorer, it doesn’t view files using Explorer. It has it own customizable viewer called File Navigator. This File Navigator allows the user to select exactly how the data appears. I like this as sometimes I want files shown by the date created and other times when the files were last modified. One very nice added feature was the Web search for file type built into the system. I do this quite often and found this function was performing the same search at the same sites that I have been used to, but without all the added opening different programs and pasting the info there. This was a much faster and easier process.

Reviewer 5. Flexense is actively developing this program. Almost every month new features are added, and older ones strengthened. Plug ins for some of the main functions are also added and updated. They have recently set up a Users’ Forum. Those of you who are members of the Neat Net Tricks Forum will find the FlexTk forum to be familiar and easy to use. It is quite young, but very active and growing in membership. Users are making proposals for improvements to the program, and Flexense Support usually responds very quickly to those suggestions. Their interest in users’ ideas bodes well for future developments of the program.

I found the support to be very responsive, both in the Users' forum, and through email. Every request that I submitted either directly or to the forum was always answered the same day, including weekends, and usually within hours. . In one case, we corresponded for several days, after which the problem was resolved. A couple of days later I received another email message from the support people, asking if I was satisfied with the result, or if I needed any further help. They deserve many kudos for this kind of customer care.

Copying, moving, renaming, deleting as well as navigating to specific directories and files are the most frequent activities for which people use Explorer. However, in carrying out these functions on large numbers of files in Explorer, the process is very slow and often bogs down or stops completely. I started with the Copy to and Move to functions of FlexTk, and was impressed with both the efficiency and speed at which these operations were carried out. FlexTk really moves from draft horse to racehorse. I copied a fairly massive set of files including every kind of file (not just data files) from one drive to another. There were 41 directories, 33,406 files, totaling 5.89 GB of drive space. This is not quite the millions that FlexTk mentions on their site, but, for me, a fairly significant number. The whole process took 21 minutes, and that included several extra minutes after the copying had finished, to verify the accuracy of the files that had been copied. Explorer would have taken a significantly longer time, and would have halted many times because some file or another would be uncopiable.

Once I had become familiar with the really efficient Copy and Move modules, I began to explore the Sync Tool. Over time I have used a number of different backup and specialized sync programs, but it is very useful to have it built right into one’s file management program. Although I know the importance of backup, I have suffered immensely because I did not take the time to set up an automatic backup process for a new set of data that I am working on. It happens quite frequently that I really do need to have an extra clone of my data. Since I am using FlexTk a great deal of the time for basic file management activities, it is there, right at hand. I Choose “Sync” from the Toolbar, define the “from” and “to” directories, and I can get back to work, rather spending time on computer-managing.

With the Organize module, I can specify a number of criteria. For example, one might be “Files Modified Today”. I can specify folders, groups of folders, drives or even groups of drives, and I add as many criteria as I like from lists of pre-defined possibilities, and the Organize Function will look after the details. I can have FlexTk carry out a command, like Copy to… your specified location (such as a backup directory). A single mouse click will carry out the command, or even a set of commands. If this is to be something that will repeat, I can set up a User-Defined Commands. A further step is to create a shortcut on my desktop for this command. Now, whenever I want this set of actions to be performed, I simply click on the shortcut, and it is carried out.

There is a Freeware version of the program called FlexTk Express. It is completely free, and can be installed on as many computers as desired The Professional Version allows a 30-day trial period before purchase at $25.00, a most reasonable price for a product that is so powerful and so well-supported.

Reviewer 6. FlexTk seems to be a solidly built program free of any noticeable or mentionable glitches. It has one of the more attractive GUI (Graphic User Interface) I have seen in some time with all of the graphics attractive, well done, and laid out for easy and intuitive use. While there are many features as mentioned above in this, what is really more of a file management suite than a single utility, and many which are really for the more advanced user, what may be its single best feature for any user is its blazingly fast search tool. It searched through over 90,000 files of approximately 60GB in less than 35 seconds! Not only is it fast, but advanced search criteria such as “Search Files Categorized As” or “Search Files Last Accessed” can be created, just to give two examples. Files can also be searched using multiple search criteria including the file name, file type, file size, access/modification/creation time, text patterns, etc. and use AND/OR operators to customize the search further. Furthermore, FlexTk allows the user to perform numerous operations with the search results including open/execute, copy, move or delete, and the results may be exported into a number of standard formats such as HTML, Excel CSV, etc. While each of the aforementioned tools worked as expected, and the Data Migration tool worked especially fast and error free, I want to also call attention to the built in disk cleaner which might be easily overlooked as “just one more disk cleaner.” It is, in fact, the best disk cleaner I have used; and while not alone worth the $25.00 for the program, it did a much better job than the highly touted CCleaner that many use, finding many more junk files that could be deleted. Technical support was same-day in my experiences, and through an email/support ticket procedure which implies that all support requests will be handled within 24 hours. There is also a very active User Forum which, I suspect, will resolve 99% of everyone’s support needs. There is also a PDF Users’ Manual that can be downloaded as well as excellent video tutorials on the Web site that make learning the full abilities of this program fairly simple. The price is a highly competitive $25.00 (actually well under the competition) with free updates for a year. Those with a huge disk or a large number of files to regularly manipulate, will find this an excellent product, and one which I can recommend.

Weak points

Reviewer 1. Though most of the features I used worked as described, I was disappointed in the performance of the Search feature. Although one can search on multiple criteria simultaneously, ultimately the feature is only as good as its results. I asked it to find all WordPerfect files created more than two years ago. I have many such files on my computer, but the Search feature found virtually none of them; it turned up three copies of a 30-byte file I'd never heard of called wordpfct.wpd, but none of the many files I had created in WordPerfect in years past. I then asked it to find a .pdf file containing the text string "KeyText scheduler," a text string that appears six times in the document. The search took almost an hour, and it did not find the file.

One other weakness concerns a certain lack of clarity in some of the classification categories. I wanted to move some text files that were stored in a single directory. All carried the .txt extension. To my dismay, when I opened the "Text File" category, I had to choose from among 13 possibilities, including three that seemed to me indistinguishable: Text File, Plain Text File, and Text Document. I first tried Text File, but that matched none of my files, nor did Plain Text File. The category that worked turned out to be Text Document, but I have no idea how it differs from the other two. I would recommend that the User's Manual be expanded to include descriptions of sub-categories like these that can easily be confused.

Reviewer 2. While there is a lengthy description on the Web site about what this program can do, the help function from within the program does little to guide the new user about where to start and what to do to use FlexTk Pro to its best advantage. For example, in using the function “Finding Duplicate Files”, I selected my data partition and clicked the “find duplicate files” icon. This was simple and intuitive and the program ran for about 15 minutes and found over 10,000 duplicate files that are mostly embedded files in e-mail messages and/or attachments. They were listed in order of the largest amount of occupied drive space. Even though there were headers at the top of the list showing other properties such as the number of duplicates, clicking on the header did not reorder the list as I would have expected. There are “plugins” available to change the ranking/selection criteria, but they were not available from this screen. Now that I found my 10,000 duplicates, the question arises about what to do with them. My hope is to delete the unneeded ones without compromising my system. There are three icon/boxes on the screen: Export, Select, and Action (with Action greyed out). Double-clicking on one set of duplicate files displayed a list of their names and locations, but no other details such as the date they were saved. Under “Select”, I can choose to select all of the oldest or newest files. Once files are selected, the Action button becomes active with options to move or delete the selected files, or “replace with links”. Nowhere on the screen was there a help function or any guidance regarding what “replace with links” could do or what its limitations were. There is expanded guidance about these functions in the .PDF format user manual, but even this was insufficient to inform me of the risks/abilities/limitations of a fairly powerful function. Also, although I had only one set of duplicates highlighted, “Select Oldest” selected the oldest duplicates from ALL of the duplicates in ALL of the sets, not just from the set that I had highlighted. Had I followed through with a deletion, I would have removed about 6,500 files unintentionally. Since many of these duplicate files were associated with specific e-mail messages, many of my e-mail messages would be compromised by the loss of the associated file even though the “duplicate file” would still exist somewhere on my hard drive.

In the “Organize” function, one can save the criteria for use to select and modify/copy files, but once created, there does not seem to be a way to review or modify that criteria.

Reviewer 3. FlexTk does a lot of things, but it takes some time to really study the on-line help and the 70-page pdf manual to really be able to utilize it to its fullest. This is not really a weak point, just a fact. The help and video tutorials were very useful. I inquired about installing Flex Tk Professional on both my desktop and my TabletPC but this is not permitted even though such arrangement is not all that unusual.

Reviewer 4. The weakest point of FlexTk Pro is in user information. While there is a very good 62-page instruction manual in PDF form explaining the functions of FlexTk Pro, it falls short in explaining what using those functions would mean to a user. There are only two example tutorials. I would suggest that the explanation of a function should contain examples as to why someone would want to use the function. For just one example, hash signatures, added to verify that data in the file has not been modified since the signature has been added. This method can be used to verify that a copy of the file is an exact copy with no alteration. Many users would not normally know the use of hash signatures. While I understand the importance of the settings selected in performing the functions of FlexTk Pro, many users won’t and as a result will have an outcome that isn’t what they desired; not because FlexTk Pro performed incorrectly but because the user didn’t understand the ramifications of the option selected.

FlexTk Pro lacks the ability to do defragmentation of a drive. While this function could be considered a hard drive maintenance task, the massive movement and deletion of files with FlexTk Pro will cause fragmentation to increase. To be a complete file management system, it should consider fragmentation as well as organization.

Reviewer 5. At first, I found that the interface was not as intuitive as I would have wished. I suspect that this is probably due to the prominence of the very powerful tools such as “Organize”, “Classify” and “Analyze” on the Main Menu Bar. To the average user, their functions are not so apparent as Copy, Delete, Rename, and all the old familiar Explorer activities. As a result, I needed to refer quite often to the Help Files.

The Help files (the Online Help and the Manual) are filled with many screenshots of the program in use, and are, in fact, excellent reference tools. But I find them to be too dense at the beginning stages. A step-by-step tutorial of the most widely-used file-management activities that people use on a daily basis would make it easier for people beginning to use the program. Most want to rename files, to copy them or move them from one place to another. They want to be able to check what they contain, and perhaps just delete them. Once they know how to use FlexTk for these kinds of activities, they will feel more comfortable in exploring the other, more powerful features of the program. It is true that there are video tutorials on line that do a good job explaining some of the powerful functions of the program. Reference to them should be prominently displayed in the User Manual, perhaps right after “2.1. Installation Process”. Their quality should be improved because they are very hard to see at present.

The “Browse To” function is very tedious. I am used to having to click through the many layers of the Explorer-Tree to get to files, but I resolutely try to avoid that as much as I can. In fact I have at least three programs that I use constantly to circumvent that very process. Having it built into the core of this program is a serious weakness in the program design. There must be a faster and easier way to get to a folder on a different drive to which, for example, you want to copy a file, than to have to browse there via the “My Computer”, click on a little “+” sign, click, click, click, click, click … You should be able use the “drag-and-drop” features of Windows instead of “Browse …”.
Some of the tools are greatly enhanced by the use of plug-ins. Although a potential user has a 30-day evaluation period, one can only install two of the plug ins; the rest are only available to registered users.

Reviewer 6. There are really no glaring weaknesses in this quality program. This is not surprising as though it is a young company (2007) the FlexTk program seems to be under constant and continual development (see below under “Comments” section). My biggest complaint is that it is a bit resource hungry and its RAM usage was high. This is something that does need to be addressed as, while 512MB of RAM is recommended and 1GB of RAM only if scanning “large scale Enterprise NAS/SAN storage devices”, scanning a 500GB hard drive with 3G of RAM installed on a very powerful platform showed some slight but noticeable slow down. I can’t help but believe that on a system with the recommended 512MB of RAM and 2GB single core CPU, the performance hit would be severe. I would also like to see a few more keyboard shortcuts available. While not exactly a weak point because it does what it promises, I am skeptical about the need for a duplicate file finder in this utility. In anyone’s hands other than an expert’s, this is a very dangerous tool. All too often even when a file meets all of the parameters of being identical, it may still be necessary — especially system files — and I can’t begin to tell you how many computers I have repaired over the years due to someone getting duplicate-file -delete-happy. If duplicate files are the only thing noticeably slowing down one’s computer and then a bigger hard drive is needed. This is an unnecessary tool and, in the very least, should be offered only with adequate warnings about its use. Finally, a note to the developers: I am very disappointed in what I will call your “hostage-ware” approach to marketing your product. By this I mean selling your product at actually a below-competition price but then limiting updates to only one year. This practice is only slightly different than some well known security applications that require purchase of a new license each year. I would much rather pay a bit more for the program and be provided all updates until a major revision is released such as from version 2.x to version 3.x.

Other Comments

Reviewer 1. Although the Software Review Panel tested the FlexTk Professional Edition whose list price is $25, the software is also available for free as FlexTk Express Edition. It contains fewer bells and whistles but still offers many of the basic features needed to classify, organize, and analyze files, identify duplicates, etc. For me, the main disadvantage of the freeware version is the absence of some of the classification plug-ins such as the one to identify music and audio files. A comparison of the different versions appears on the Flexense Web site at http://www.flexense.com/FlexTk/versions.html.

Reviewer 2. Updates and E-mail support are provided for one year.

Reviewer 3. There are a number of modules: Search allows one to craft a set of search parameters including a “user-defined search string for reuse. Organize allows performing a number of different file operations very quickly, such as copy, move, delete or execute a particular command. The file operations can be “stacked” and all run during one pass. Sync assists in backing up date from more than one computer or separate hard drive and allows setting up a command string to do this with one click of a desktop icon without even opening the program. The sync operations are customizable for “one-way” or “two-way” with sub-sets of those. Classify scans a directory or folder and tells what type of files it contains as well as how many, the total size of that type and the percentage of the total of that type that the folder or directory contains. Analyze tells what type of files a directory contains and allows copying or moving the directory to another location of allows deletion of the directory if desired. Find Directory scans a selected directory or the entire computer and for duplicate files. The results show how many duplicates of the same file exist and by right-clicking one can choose to delete or substitute a link to the original and then delete the duplicates, a great way to gain back some disk space. Disk Clean-Up allows selecting files to remove. The file categories are selectable by check box.

Reviewer 4. I did not test all the functions of FlexTk Pro because many are applicable to an enterprise situation of many networked systems and beyond my resources.

Reviewer 5. FlexTk is a very complex program, with many functions built into each module. Each procedure has an almost limitless number of ways that it can be modified and structured to meet the individual needs of the user. This myriad of possibilities is both the strength and weakness of FlexTk. It can be quite overwhelming, so the user needs to spend some time learning it. I even printed out the manual, which over time has become well-thumbed, with much highlighting and penciled notes. But I do think that it is well worth the effort. In fact, my “Main” computer went through an almost complete meltdown, so I am now rebuilding its structure entirely. FlexTk was the second program that I installed on it, and it has been helping me to move massive amounts of data to their new locations.

Reviewer 6. I mentioned previously that this program seemed to be in a constant and continual state of development. Just in the four months that I used the program there were five updates (2.0.20, 2.1.18, 2.2.24, 2.3.36, 2.4.28), and these were not simply “bug fixes” but significant upgrades offering new tools and major improvements. This is a sign of a developer who takes pride in his or her product and as such is likely to take pride in offering good customer support because their customers are important to them.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1. Yes.

Reviewer 2. No, but I would reconsider this if a future version had better documentation, integrated help functions, and safeguards.

Reviewer 3. Most definitely, I liked it a lot. It is easy to use, runs fast on most operations and provides good tech support.

Reviewer 4. Yes, it will become my main file management

Reviewer 5. Yes, it is now in a very select group of Essential Utilities.

Reviewer 6. Yes, but on my office computer where this program was tested. I suspect that on many home computers there are just not enough files to justify such a powerful file management program.

Flexense, developers of FlexTk, responded: Thank you for a great review. You have done a great work and Flexense's team will analyze the review very carefully with an aim to improve all mentioned weak points. There will be no objections about mentioned issues. All weaknesses, real issues and misunderstandings, will be regarded as our faults and we will do our best to make more people happy with our products. The whole review will be transformed into a list of tasks, which will be prioritized and executed within a couple of upcoming months. Thanks for an excellent review and a great feedback for us.

OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows XP Pro, XP Home

Back