I’ve been flat out and haven’t had a chance to work on my Searching for Desktop Search blog for ages and ages.
I thought that I’d mention that NetworkWorld has recently published some desktop search reviews:
- Windows 7 Search might be all you need
- dtSearch Desktop, Version 7.64
- X1 Professional Client, Version 6.7
- Google Desktop, Version 5.9
- ISYS Personal Edition, Version 9.6
- Exalead Desktop, Version 4.6
I’ve tested many (at least a dozen) desktop search programs for Windows over the last five or more years, including X1 and Copernic search, and I could really tell some stories about them!
But at the moment only have dtSearch Desktop installed on my 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. Currently, I’m actively using only Windows 7 search (when I migrated from Windows XP as soon as Windows 7 was released in August last year, I discarded some of the other desktop search programs).
While Windows 7 search has many good features, one thing that I really dislike about it the ability to readily enter advanced searches (with Boolean search arguments, etc), as you can using dtSearch like this:
All that Windows 7 gives you is this:
or this inscrutable nonsense at the top right of Windows Explorer:
What Windows 7 desktop search badly needs is an approachable query interface, say like Google’s “Advanced Search” form:
But one distinct advantage for Windows 7 is that it’s built in, and the indexer works unobtrusively and continuously in the background. I find its performance impact to be unnoticeable, and due to the continuous “on the fly” indexing you can query documents added just a few seconds ago.
More about this, and the some distinct advantages of dtSearch, some other time when I have a moment or two to put down my findings.
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