Multi Editors. A lot of people wonder why they even need them. Isn't Microsoft Word or a comparable product good enough? Well, for most people, it probably is. But for those of us who need to have a large number of files open at one time, such as programmers, multi editors are a life saver. So the question becomes, which one do you buy when there are so many? While Multi Edit is probably the most popular and arguably the most powerful, its huge price tag may put some people off. That's where IDM Comp's Ultra Edit can be a perfectly acceptable alternative.

IDM really did their homework with this piece of software. Because of the numerous functions that it can perform we can't get into all of them here. But we will touch on the high points of this very powerful piece of editing software.

For starters, when setting up a project, which is the main function of Ultra Edit, you can designate as many files for the project to open at one time as you have memory to handle. There is no limit. Each file when opened has its own memory space and own window, all visible at once. Just a simple click of your mouse on the top tabs switches from one file to the next.

Ultra edit can be set up to recognize a large number of file types. You can work on text files, HTML files, bcc files and on and on. When working on each file type, the properties of the editor itself adapt to the file itself. For example. When working on an HTML file, the color coding of each line changes to reflect the main parts of an HTML file. This way you can get a good handle on your tags, fonts, etc. Plain text files will appear in black and white.

Ultra Edit also has the ability to edit machine code. You can view any file at all in hex and edit it. So if you are a super programmer and want to tweak a piece of machine code, as long as you know what you're doing, this software will let you do it. Also, while you're making your machine code changes, the editor will show you the English changes in an adjoining window. Really cool stuff.

Ultra Edit, of course, also comes with all the standard things that you would expect in any regular text editor, like search, search and replace, spell checking, changing lower to upper case, cut and paste, sorting options for lists and a help function that puts most software to shame.

And, if you're a real super user, you can customize your Ultra Edit to perform just about any way you like by editing certain ini switches. There is also the customize option in the main menu itself. You can have Ultra Edit close open files immediately upon opening a new project or have it prompt you first.

At about half the price of Multi Edit, Ultra Edit is a real bargain and runs on just about any Windows platform. You can't go wrong with this piece of software if you need this kind of power and don't want to shell out a lot of money.