Fences lets you divide up your messy desktop into a number of groups - or 'fences' - letting you put newly downloaded files in one fence, current projects in another fence, and short notes in another. We've talked about Fences numerous times before, and there's a reason for that: there's just no better way to get your desktop clean and organized. Check out our App Directory entry on Xplorer 2 for more info on its competition. If you don't like Xplorer 2, you can check out some of its competition, like the similarly-priced but ugly Total Commander, or the much more expensive, but amazing Directory Opus. It also uses Windows' built-in file operations, but a quick installation of Teracopy's free version should fix that problem pretty quickly. While there are a lot of other advanced file managers, Xplorer 2's ability to actually replace Windows Explorer as your default file manager is a killer feature for us, making it our favorite. It has an advanced, but not difficult-to-use, interface that lets you browse with tabs, multiple panes for easy file copying, tons of keyboard shortcuts, and advanced searching (which is the main reason to buy Pro over the free lite version). There are a ton of great alternative file browsers out there, but our favorite is Xplorer 2.

Windows Explorer is simple and easy to use, which is great for beginners - but once you cross the line into power user territory, it really just doesn't cut it. Here are our picks for the best shareware programs that power up Windows. All we're saying is, if you're willing to pay $100 or more for the upgrade to Windows 8 - or even Windows 7, for that matter - you should be more than willing to pay $100 for five feature-packed programs. Apart from some nice speed improvements, it also adds some improvements in areas that really needed it, like Windows Explorer or the Task Manager, and we're pretty excited about it. Windows 8 looks like it'll be a worthwhile iteration to the Windows operating system.

So, if you'd rather pay $100 for a real feature boost, consider buying these five programs to get a truly new version of Windows. Windows 8 is on the way this fall, but apart from a few tweaks here and there, it isn't exactly packing a ton of new features into the Windows desktop.

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