Smart Computing - Desktop Searching Tools

Smart Computing! - Deasktop searching tools

What is a desktop searching tool?

A desktop search tool indexes files (documents, images, audio, video) in the computer sothat we can search very quickly through all the files (filename as well as file contents are searches) for a given search string.

What are the advantages?

There are many.

* Searching will be lightning fast.
* Searching includes not only file names but also the file contents.
* Some desktop searching tools provides many options for searching.

What are the disasdvantages?

* Indexing is a time consuming process. If you've many files (say 40 GB +) it will take hours to complete indexing.
* Though full indsexing is done only once, indexing service should run in the baxckground to ensure that addition and deletion of files are upsdated in the database. That is indexing is a never ending process. And it takes a little system resource. (You should turn off the indexing service in Windsows XP.)

Do we need it?

Well ! it depends. If you are a gamer and or you neesd performance rather than ease of use, then you may stick with the basic searching service offered by Windows. (XP also offers an indexing service and MSN desktop search is based on this indexing service. So you should turn off this service too. [Tell me How?] )

But a strong 'Yes' if you need to search documents, images etc frequently and wants instant results. Once you used it you cant done without it. And the best part is you dont need to pay.

Which one?

Many companies provides desktop search. Like gmail, google started the trend. With its first desktop search tool, the searching power of google finally came to the desktop. Then many companies started providing desktop searching tools. They include Yahoo!, MSN, Copernic etc. They are already familiar to the web users. All of them are powerful web search engines. So we need to decide which is the best one?

Google revolutionised the search engine technology. So a lot of expectations were there when they released their desktop search beta version. The interface is similar to that of the web search. The search page opens in a new browser window and takes some time to load. The searching is really fast. Nothing beats google there. But in terms of features, Copernic another revolutionary search tool, beats google and the others. The interface is really good (it is both good looking and easy to use). Google takes a lot of space for indexing. And we cant change the path to store the index files. So you need atleast 1 GB free space in your Windows drive. But Copernic only took very less space when compared to Google (500 vs 150MB in my system with two 40 GB hard disks and 60 + GB of data). Copernic can index PDF files also. So you can search what ever you want. It offers image search, music search, video search, Email search, etc. A definite tool.

Final Verdict

In my opinion, Copernic beats every desktop searching tools in terms of features. The search is also powerful. But to open the folder containing files, you cannot use your keyboard. You should right click. The keyboard's rightclick key does not work.