Desktop Search... which product do you use?

[Gavin Scott]

Seperate

What's wrong with that?

Obviously the spell checker needs work.

It's separate, actually.

[cat]

Oh... balls.

[Dr Lobster*]

you might be interested to know, i have completed some field tests of this at work recently and in my view the best product turned out to copernic.

we've been testing x1, copernic, windows desktop search and google desktop search on various datasets, single machines, single machines with network shares and indexing the entire tree of our user server.

in terms of footprint copernic wins hands down, only a single process. windows desktop search takes about 6 different processes if you need to index unc shares. (we were testing wds 3)

x1 is a hard one, in terms of a raw indexer, it is superior to every product we tested. the problem with it is the interface is horrible and its easy to confuse the main search query edit box with the filter edit box. but the index is perhaps the most complete.

Google Desktop Search (for us) is inherently flawed. using a web interface to search a local computer with lots of different data types doesn't work as well has perhaps it should, and although the indexing works well (as it does with network shares) the lack of options makes it a difficult one to recommend.

so there you go. copernic it is.

[Jovis]

Surprising as it may sound, I don't really search my computer that often. So in fact I end up simply using good(?) old Windows built in search.

Maybe its because my machine is fairly new, so I don't have many that many files, or just because I know where they all are, I don't know.

[Dr Lobster*]

Surprising as it may sound, I don't really search my computer that often. So in fact I end up simply using good(?) old Windows built in search.

Maybe its because my machine is fairly new, so I don't have many that many files, or just because I know where they all are, I don't know.

it might also be because the default search options in windows mean that hidden and system folders aren't searched.

if you do have a lot of documents, images or music then it does come in handy... i have lots of source files which the old fashion way take several minutes to search, with copernic it's done in seconds.

[Gavin Scott]

This is very interesting to me as now I have google desktop search I couldn't live without it. My default way to locate *anything* now is to type into the search bar.

There's no question that it has made my life a bit easier, but I have concerns about it slowing up my machine, particularly as I bought a new machine for fairly intensive video editing.

So am I hearing that Copernic won't have the same impact in terms of processor needs?

[Jovis]

I should have said that I have used Google Desktop before, but I haven't installed it on my current machine. I did find it useful before, when I had many more files. I do prefer Spotlight on a Mac though.

[Dr Lobster*]

This is very interesting to me as now I have google desktop search I couldn't live without it. My default way to locate *anything* now is to type into the search bar.

There's no question that it has made my life a bit easier, but I have concerns about it slowing up my machine, particularly as I bought a new machine for fairly intensive video editing.

So am I hearing that Copernic won't have the same impact in terms of processor needs?

take a look at this, this is the memory usage and cpu time after a couple of searches this evening.

http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upl ... sslist.jpg

as a comparison, i have 152,910 documents and 3,133,631 keywords in my index.

the physical size of the index is 1.2gb. At work it indexed many more files with pretty much identical resource usage.

although the name of the process is desktopsearchservice, it doesn't actually run as a system service, it's launched through the startup folder. this has one implication in that documents won't be indexed if you're not logged in, but it also means that you can easily disable indexing if you need to with uninstalling or messing around. you can also pause it from the tray icon.

i'd recommend giving copernic a go. when you uninstall google desktop search i think it gives you the option to keep your indexes, in any case, you can always install it again.

i've tried them all and copernic just seems to fit into the way i work so well. for instance, the way it handles pdf files is so so much better:

http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upl ... sgrab1.jpg

it uses it's own engine, rather than (like windows desktop search and google), it starts adobe pdf reader, which not only takes ages is totally unnecessary.

[cdd]

I encouraged my friend to install GDS a while back in an attempt to WOW him, but it turned out that despite having done its indexing, it wouldn't find a file if it hadn't been pre-opened in Word. Hence he was suitably unimpressed.

So perhpas I'll have a go on him with Copernic

[Fireboy]

[cdd]

Isn't that like saying "I use Windows Desktop Search"?
Except, of course, you don't get the luxury of alternatives with Apple.