The suite offers a fully featured newsreader, FTP and Gopher client. During 1998, the various components of the EmTec Network Suite were provided as standalone products, thus the EmTec FTP client was born. Don't expect a massive Microsoft-like interface, with buttons, bells and whistles all over the place. EmTec FTP has just three toolbar buttons from which to choose — connect, configure and help.

The first initiates a dialog box address book — you can add an almost infinite number of you favourite sites, have EmTec FTP remember your login and password, and log in anonymously if required. After you have taken the initial time to set up your address book, connecting to a site is as simple as double-clicking the nickname you have given it, and you're in!

Transferring files is even easier due to the wonderful nature of OS/2 — just drag and drop. A status indicator bar shows you just how far you are through the download, much better than the generic OS/2 'bytes downloaded'.

An FTP site manager stores sites in folders, references to site objects can be accessed from your desktop, and here's drag and drop for transfers, queuing, site manipulation, a very handy local file manager, and a ping feature to test site responsiveness before connecting.

If you have several files to get, an unlimited number of simultaneous connections to the same site are available (depending on the servers), so multiple and simultaneous transfers to the same site are a breeze. As you would expect from a native OS/2 application, the graphical file transfer display is very intuitive — just like using your file manager. If you've ever used an FTP connection, you've lost an FTP connection — a terrible thing if you're downloading. Not any more. FTP Browser supports seamless reconnects for lost connections, and will automatically resume interrupted transfers, and resume partially transferred files.

Something that is so often missing from FTP applications is the ability to transfer whole directories, and, if required, subdirectories as well. FTP Browser handles recursive directory tree transfers and deletes with ease. If you handle two or more file physical locations, or run a mirroring site, a tree synchronisation feature for maintaining identical trees on local and remote systems saves a lot of time.

Most servers these days have a file called 00index.txt in every directory — a text file that lists each file, its size and often a short description of it. NFTP automatically downloads the 00index.txt file and shows file descriptions. Another great feature is that NFTP reconnects to an FTP server as needed. You'll no longer need to worry about timeouts and dropped connections.