Total Commander vs Altap Salamander

Supports plugins for compression, file system, and file types.

There are a lot of built-in utility tools and plug-ins. There's multi-file renamer, verify file checksum to ensure download content integrity, sync directory tool, etc.

Once purchased you can use it as long as you like and never have to pay again.

The dual-pane layout makes normal file operations (like move & copy) easy.

Show hidden files, show differences between directories, FTP connections, coding and decoding (MIME, l).

Total Commander is extremely flexible, with plenty of customizable options such as changing the color scheme, customizing menus, and editing shortcuts.

Even if you have not learned the keys from DOS NortonCommander, learning them now will make you more productive when dealing with files.

The file search has many features, like using regular expressions to find the file names or even inside the content of the files. It can filter by file size, date and others, or even find duplicate files.

Can compare and show text file differences (diff) line-by-line, even character-by-character. Very useful for programmers. Can compare binary files, telling if files have the same content or not.

Sometimes you want to rename a bunch of files for some reason.
Eg:
file1-useless info blah blah.mp8
file2-useless info blah blah.mp8
file3-useless info blah blah.mp8
file4-useless info blah blah.mp8
file5-useless info blah blah.mp8

At once you can remove the "-useless info blah blah" in all file names. Or you could change the "file" to "my_super_file" to all at once.

The possibilities are endless.

Allows renaming tabs and setting maximum tab text length, which is very convenient. You can also lock tabs in two modes: a) change dir not allowed and b) change dir allowed (but it would return to the original path once you browse another tab). It doesn't allow assigning different colors to each tab, though.

Sometimes you need to copy/move a bunch of files to a folder that already has files. During the copy when Total Commander encounter files in the destination folder that has the same name of the copied files, it allows you to choose auto-rename the copied files or the destination files. It's beautiful.

The total commander is convenient to use both with the mouse and exclusively using the keyboard.
But using only the keyboard gives it a big increase in the speed of work because you do not aim at your mouse. You need some time to get used to it, but it's really worth it.

The program features a dual-pane interface that allows you to easily move files between views.

No delay is noticable in the user interface.

Can be used at home and work.

The program has built in support for a variety of common network protocols (such as FTP, FTPS, SCP and SFTP) for file transferring over the internet.

Easy bookmark usage, e.g., Shift+1 selects the first directory. The bookmarked directories are also available in the usual popups to switch the left/right drive (Alt+F1/F2).

Different colors can be assigned to compressed files or files with a certain name pattern.

Enables user to automate repetitious actions via JScript and VBScript (via windows script engines already installed). There is also support for Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby (Arton's ruby must be installed to have the Action script support)