UltraCompare 

UltraCompare is intended to help you compare files and folders without much effort. Besides, this application lets you preview and merge their contents. Its easy-to-use interface is composed of a series of side-by-side panels and allows browsing through the differences detected. Moreover, it can also be used from the command line or through a secondary click within Windows File Manager.

This utility allows various ways to perform a comparison. Some of the operations it supports include line-by-line, smart binary and 3-way comparisons as well as synchronization and merging of contents. Fortunately, comparisons can be fitted to your specific needs by telling the program to ignore given differences and use special filters.

It is a good thing that the application can interpret Word, Excel and PDF files, some of the most widely used formats. This way, it makes it quite easy to detect any changes made to the original version. One of its best advantages the availability of a three-way compare/merge mode, which lets you compare two documents to a source. Moreover, the utility can detect duplicate files by comparing not only their metadata but their binary contents as well. I am also glad to say that this tool also allows comparing the contents of not only local folders but also network and FTP locations.

One thing I did not like about this application is that, although there are versions for most major languages, they must be download them separately and it is not possible to change the interface language after it has been installed.

In general, I was quite pleased with UltraCompare. The program is both easy-to-use and powerful. The product is shareware and can be tried at no cost. However, if comparing files and folders is for you just a casual operation, you might not be willing to spend almost 50 bucks on it. In such case, it is good to know that there are some free alternatives out there.