Compared to the FTP-program that comes with OS/2 Warp, VxFTP is a great improvement. First of all, it is rock solid. To date, after approximately four months of use, it has never crashed on me and I often have a lot of programs running simultaneously, including a DOS faxserver, and one or two Microsoft Windows applications. My setup is a 486DX2 with 24 MB of RAM. This program is a true PM application and it can be run from both the command line or the Workplace Shell.

Installation is a breeze. After unzipping the archive file into a temporary directory, you simply run the PM install program. It asks you where you want the program files and VROBJ.DLL to be installed (if you have a newer version of this file installed you can opt not to install it) and it goes on to create WPS objects so you can get started right away.

One of these objects is the one you double-click when you need help. It is an URL object that takes you right to the author's Web page (via WebExplorer). The same page is also launched if you ask for help inside the program. This may sound a bit awkward, but actually it provides for a help file that is a lot more up to date than one that could come with the program. It will also let you download the source code if you want to modify the program. Being connected from Norway and the URL being in the U.S.A., I was a bit sceptical about the speed of this. The truth is, it was all very fast.

The author, Howard T. Hyten, has written this program with the aid of Watcom's VX-REXX. As noted above, this means that the program has to load the file VROBJ.DLL before it starts (the DLL file is included in the archive). On my setup this takes about 12 seconds. On more memory constrained systems (such as 8 meg machines), performance can be significantly worse, due to the high overhead of VROBJ.DLL (~900k).

Hyten has created a program that uses the power of OS/2 to a great extent. It uses threads heavily, which means when you are downloading a file from an FTP site you can still view a README file locally, or unzip an archive, or even execute another program. At first glance, the program may look simple (gif 13.4k) but don't be deceived! It has a lot of power. It is the sort of program that you wonder how you ever managed without.

There are no help--or documentation--files included in the archive, but you don't really need them since the program is very straightforward to use. Also, you always get hints when the mouse pointer is above a button or a filebox.

If you are one those people that like to tinker with what other people have created, then you can have some fun with this program. You can specify a default download directory, if you want to use InfoZIP's unzip.exe (or good old PKunzip.exe) to unpack your downloaded files, or if you want it to redial if the FTP server is busy. This can be nice if you use a busy anonymous server like Hobbes. If you use a server regularly you can add it to the address-book (gif 4.6k) along with your preferred path and a handy 'alias'. If you check the button for 'anonymous' it will also automatically provide your e-mail address when logging on. All pretty standard options, but nice nonetheless.

During a download a progress indicator is displayed at the bottom of the main window telling you how far along the transfer has come. One thing to note is that this only works if you are downloading to a HPFS formatted drive. This is because VxFTP uses the REXX STREAM function to determine the amount of bytes downloaded. The FAT file system does not support this. Being an OS/2 advocate I urge you all to use HPFS anyway!

A nice plus is the ability to view remote text files without saving a copy to your local drive. Just right-click on the file in the file list and select 'View' and a small text window opens containing the file. However, there are no menu options in this window if you decide you do want to save the file locally after all.

My conclusion after having used this program for some months is that it is a very solid program. Annoyingly it uses the VROBJ.DLL, and therefore has to load it before executing--but this is just a minor gripe. The program is absolutely rock solid, and it works. It may not look beautiful but it works well. I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to get ahold of a good FTP program.

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