File Viewers: Open for Business
Windows' Quick View offers extremely limited
file viewing functionality. We recommend Quick View Plus or
KeyView Pro.
File incompatibilities are a leading cause of mice with toothmarks all
over them. The scenario: Under pressure to get a project finished, you receive
a long-awaited file after-hours. Huzzah! But when you try to open it, you
find it was created in a program your PC doesn't have--and you're ready to
start gnawing.
File viewers to the rescue. These handy utilities let you view, print,
and copy text from files created by applications you don't have. They even
maintain the original version's formatting. They don't, however, let you convert
files to a different format. For that, you need a converter like Conversions
Plus from DataViz ($100 street price; www.dataviz.com; 800/733-0030; product
info no. 650).
Windows 95 and 98 come with a simple file viewer called Quick View, which
supports only 31 file types, including .asc, .bmp, .doc, .exe, .ini, .ppt,
.wmf, .wri, and .xls file formats. Quick View is essentially a scaled-down
version of Quick View Plus from Inso, from whom the product was originally
licensed. Some PC users don't need anything more substantial, but if you often
receive files you can't open, you should purchase a dedicated file viewer.
We looked at four file viewers, testing them on 15 reasonably common file
types, including a Word document, an Excel worksheet, a Macintosh Illustrator
file, a PowerPoint presentation, and various image formats. The only file
that none could open was a Macintosh Quark document. Panoramic 3.1 handled
the most formats, but it's also the most expensive viewer, at $99. When we
balanced price against performance, KeyView Pro and Quick View Plus (both
priced at $59) tied for the Best Buy.
Quick View Plus from Jasc--the company that distributes Inso's product
at the retail level--opened 10 of our 15 test files. It supports an additional
175 file types beyond Windows' meager 31. It also integrates with many Windows
applications, kicking in automatically when you click on a file in any such
application. Quick View Plus and KeyView Pro were the only two viewers that
could handle a .ppt presentation.
In fact, Verity's KeyView Pro 6.5 opened the same 10 test file types as
Quick View Plus. Its interface is starkly simple: Drop down the File menu
and click Open. Or you can elect to integrate KeyView with your applications
so it works automatically when you try to open a file for which you lack the
original app.
Panoramic 3.1 from Cimmetry reads big files slowly, but otherwise it works
extremely well, with a simple interface that opened 11 of our test file formats--more
than any other viewer we tested. It was the only viewer that could open Microsoft
Access files and Illustrator files created on a Macintosh. Panoramic's mark-up
feature lets you add comments and graphics to viewed files before you print
them--without altering the original file.
Drag and View 4.50 from Canyon Software integrates easily with Windows
Explorer. It was the only viewer we tested that could handle a Macintosh PhotoShop
file. However, Drag and View opened only nine of our test files.
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KeyView Pro 6.5
street pricing: $43A-$59
Verity
800/787-1166
www.verity.com
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Quick View Plus
street pricing: $40A-$59
Jasc
800/622-2793
www.jasc.com
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