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Proto is a file manager made for power users who prefer working with the command-line console rather than a GUI. It enables you to perform various operations using keyboard shortcuts.

Once launched, Proto creates a icon in the system tray area and gets minimized there. It automatically indexes fixed NTFS volumes and removable media devices, thus giving you the possibility to freely navigate these locations.

It supports multiple tabs and UI themes. You can obtain size information about the disk, sort items in the current location by file name, extension, size or date of creation, last modification or access (in ascending or descending order), open files and launch programs, as well as copy items to the Clipboard.

It's also possible to add file paths to an existing list in the Clipboard, send items to the Recycle Bin or permanently delete them, clone the current tab, rename files using regular expressions, convert file types, compress files using 7-Zip (included in the downloaded package), and so on.

As long as you have .NET Framework installed, you don't need to set up anything else. You can save the program files to any part of the hard drive and just click the executable to launch Proto. Another possibility is to keep it stored on a USB flash drive, in order to directly run it on any PC with minimum effort. It shouldn't modify your Windows registry settings.

No error dialogs popped up in our tests, and the software utility didn't hang or crash. It left a small footprint on system resources, running on low CPU and RAM. On the other hand, the supported keyboard shortcuts are not listed in the main window, so make sure to check out the documentation files in the downloaded package.

Once you get the hand of it, Proto offers a simple way to manage files if you prefer the keyboard to the mouse. Too bad that it hasn't been recently updated, though.