Let’s face it. We’re all pretty much packrats when it comes to our computers. Some of us are, by necessity, bigger packrats than others. As it is my duty to search the four corners of the globe to bring you all the tech news that’s fit to print (or at least as much as can fit this space), I collect files at a pretty rapid clip.

Sometimes they’re images. Sometimes QuickTime, YouTube, or Windows Media movies. Sometimes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. My most packratted files are web pages, plucked from the fluid, ever-changing web and saved on my Mac, into posterity, as PDF files.

Sometimes the names of the files I collect (or make myself) are lacking in information about the file’s contents. For some reason web designers (I know this ‘cause I are one) love to use cryptic names for their files rather than names that are more descriptive of what’s in the file. For example, the filename “image001.jpg” tells me it’s a photo of something, but of what?

The Finder in the current version of Mac OS X, called “Tiger”, builds an icon for each file that displays, in most cases, some representation of what’s in the file. Photos display a small thumbnail of the image, for instance. When using Tiger’s “column” view, more information about the file’s content can be displayed. QuickTime movies can be viewed, music files can be listened to, that sort of thing, without having to open the QuickTime player or iTunes.

The next major update to the Mac OS X operating system, called “Leopard”, due to start prowling store shelves in October, takes the ability to see what’s in a file without opening the application that created it to the next level.

Apple calls it Quick Look. Here’s how it works. Select a file’s icon or name in any Finder window, then click the Quick Look icon or press the keyboard’s spacebar. Presto! Say you’ve selected a .jpg photo file. Quick Look displays the photo in a window that can be expanded to full screen with the click of a button. All without opening Preview or iPhoto or Photoshop.

How about a multi-page document like a PDF? No problem. “Forward” and “Back” buttons take you through all the pages of a PDF document. Same with MS Word documents, MS Excel spreadsheets, and Apple Keynote presentations. Again, all without opening the applications that created them. Sweet.

Another Leopard feature that will streamline my packratting is called “Back To My Mac” (we’ll call it “BTMM” for short). Let’s say it’s November, and I am in some exotic locale with my trusty MacBook Pro (running Leopard) at my side (well, actually, on the hotel room desk in front of me). BTMM will give me access to all the files on my home iMac (also running Leopard) via the internet. In order to use BTMM, I’ll need a .Mac account, which is used to handle the secure “handshake” between my MacBook Pro and iMac.

Once I enable BTMM, the contents of my home iMac will show up in the MacBook Pro’s Finder just like I was at home on my wireless network. I can view files via the above-described Quick Look (yes, even click through multi-page documents), and move a copy of them to my MacBook Pro simply by dragging them over. Obviously, the speed of the entire process is governed by my hotel room’s internet connection.

Although BTMM requires a .Mac membership ($69 per year with a new Mac, $99 otherwise), it’s way cheaper than GoToMyPC, which is $179 per year. Seems like a deal to me.