Wikipedia
PowerDesk is an orthodox file manager for Windows produced by Avanquest Software SA. It is currently at version 9.0.1.10, and it is available both as a free product with partial capabilities and no technical support and the full, commercial version retailing for US$39.95 which integrates file search and management with FTP, compression, content preview, rapid search and other functions.
The name of the company making PowerDesk has changed on a few occasions since the first version came out in 1990, with OnTrack Data International being the publisher until recently. One difference this software currently has with many of its type is that it is not extensible with plug-ins, whereas Total Commander, XYplorer and others do allow for plug-ins and helper programmes to be integrated with the main software much in the same fashion as TextPad, which add functionality ranging from additional compression algorithms to e-mail capability to recovery of deleted files to being able to view the contents of database and spreadsheet files from within the manager.
PowerDesk's main competitors are Total Commander, XYplorer, ZTreeWin amongst commercial software and Midnight Commander and Explorer++ amongst free and/or copylefted software; a comprehensive table can be found in Wikipedia as part of the article Comparison of file managers. PowerDesk had a 2.5 of 5 rating at CNet as of 15 July 2014.
The free Version 4 is on the programme disk in the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kits. The documentation for this version and others puts an emphasis on PowerDesk as a compression tool whilst noting that it is a complete alternative to Windows Explorer and the My Computer icon.