Ditto on Bitstream Navigator
Bitstream Navigator from Corel is great as a couple of people have mentioned.
It is a good idea to just have your base fonts loaded as too many installed at one time hogs system memory and causes slowdowns in loading.
Bitstream shows you a list of "installed" fonts and a list of "available" fonts. You can type in whatever text you want and scroll through either list to preview what it will look like. If you see one that you like in the "available" list, all you have to do is drag it into the "installed list and voila, it is available as a system font. You can arrange your fonts into families to make it easier to manage as well. Bitstream will do a search through ALL your fonts that are available on your computer (or even the whole network) and show them. We use this feature all the time when a customer wants a certain "look".
Have fun with it cause it makes life a lot easier and my computer likes me more.
cheers
andrew