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Desktop Search Engines Compared
nutterButter writes "After Google created a stir with its desktop search engine, other engines gained more awareness in the public eye. Slate did a comparison of them and Google was not their top pick; Copernic was. I tried it - and am quite impressed."
Any plans for one? Otherwise it'll be hard for me to form an opinion of my own.
Copernic is also the only one on TFA that can search Firefox.
Desktop search apps search your local files and e-mails. I find Google Desktop to do a better job of searching my Outlook e-mails than Outlook's find function, personally.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Copernic? Wasn't that a sort of Windows desktop Meta-search engine before Google became popular? Shame there was never a Linux version. I believe Apple's Sherlock does something similiar.
That, and web browsers are apps.
I assume you get the picture :-)
---
Yeah, I'm like this on my blog too ;-)
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Repeat after me... You use it to search your PC. YOUR PC. Not the web. Okay?
Congratulations on the first post. Too bad you didn't have time to do even the quickest scan of the story, though... Maybe it would make you sound like less of an idiot.
It's called Mac OS X Tiger. If you've used iTunes, you know how good and how fast searching can be. It's going to be pretty awesome when it comes out.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Sorry for the flamebait post, but i can proudly say that copernic is a Canada (quebec :):) based company ! :)
Mess with the best, die like the rest
The biggest use (and what makes it a necessity for me now) I have for a desktop search tool is searching for a webpage I partially remember visiting a few weeks ago, but need more information from. GDS indexes the content of all pages as you visit them, making finding them relatively easy - as far as I could tell (tested over half an hour), Copernic only indexed title and URL, which was of much less use.
A minor point for the geekier here - GDS can also be activated using quicksearch URLs from IE or Firefox, which is handy for those used to getting everything from one field.
"Really, do you really need an app to search the web, surely www.google.com or at the most the google toolbar is all that is needed."
Personally I'd prefer the one the CIA uses. Written in LISP, if memory serves. Now that's searching.
I can't understand why the regular search function isn't enough. No, I'm serious. What do these products offer that a regular search cannot afford? Seems everyone is on the desktop search bandwagon these days.
A blog like any other.
What amazes me is why would anyone trust this sort of application? Other than a virus scanning program, I really don't want any application to have permission to scan, search, and index every file on my harddisk. I don't care what the privacy policies are ; it's not something I'm willing to risk.
is that i can only open the file i search for!
i planned to sort out my music collection - so i searched for an artist - 87 results.
can i select them all and move them to a folder in one go? no.
for this kind of thing it's useless - i wonder if i can with copernic..
My office fell for the rot about Google being a "security risk".
Maybe it is just me, but for home users, is a tool like this really necessary?
If you do not put things in directories, and are really disorganized, I suppose it would be, but I suspect that most people are at least somewhat organized when it comes to computer files...
Then again, my perception may be skewed, since most people I come in contact with who use computers a lot are my college friends, and they are all pretty computer literate.
google for lookout, works great in Outlook.
Hello? What about the company that invented this category, X1? Yahoo's using them for their desktop search app, and they're considered the standard-bearer by many. Definitely the most feature-rich (250+ file formats, netscape and eudora mail support, etc. etc.)
This is the most unintelligent statement made of /. to date.
I've tried these so-called "Desktop Search" apps like Google and Copernic, but they're all crap. If you want serious desktop search, get something like DTSearch (http://dtsearch.com/PLF_desktop_2.html).
Only problem is DTSearch is hella expensive at $200.
But if you've got serious amounts of text that you need to search (I use it to search through 80gb of text on an external HD), its the only way to go.
Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains.
The latest edition of the Beagle newsletter has just been released.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Personally, I already have apps I use to search my hard drive, Why do I need more apps to do the same thing? it's a waste of time.
I'm too paranoic to use desktop search. I don't care who produce it - Google or Shmoogle, i'm still pretty sure that all world wants to spy on me!
Doctor! I need a doctor!
Slate got bought by the Washington Post a few weeks ago
Slate also likes Firefox better than Internet Explorer, so your bias claim is null and void.
It is possible for someone to make a better product than Google.
For more information, click here.
Dont tell Microsoft or they will get bought.
Slate is completely journalistically independant of their owner, Microsoft. For instance, I distinctly remember them recommending Firefox.
Le français vous intéresse?
Because less really is more.
Can your 'find' function search PDF files? Can it search _in_ files at all? Does your filesystem provide metadata to search on?
Your argument might be valid for users of OS X, but for the rest, these apps provide functionality that is not found in the OS.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of my first day at work at Enfish, one of the very first desktop search engines. You can try it yourself at enfish.com. I also wrote part of the indexing system for what eventually became X1 at idealab after I left Enfish in 1999.
Enfish has the best Windows integration, and X1 has a very snappy search. Enfish uses less memory for a large index and supports more data types.
Linux types can always use glimpse or roll something themselves with Lucene (an apache project).
Nice to know that it only took a decade for the product category to heat up...
Windows' Find has been able to search in files (just a dumb ASCII search though) since Win95. NTFS provides metadata, but it is about as far from userfriendly as you can get and essentially unused.
Well how many different ways can you search on boobs?
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For the same reason you probably don't use WordPad (or whatever the equivalent is on Macs) to do word processing, don't spend your free time playing solitare instead of Half Life, etc. They work better.
slate is already sold to washington post. . and here
So did the yahoo desktop search not make the list?
or did they froget it
I mean I know Microsoft is evil and everything but the indexing service works fine for me........
Vote Quimby!
Copernic also runs under WindowsXp 64bit, which google does not.
I'm one of those "gifted" kids that can "change the world" if I'd get off my ass and stop reading slashdot.
All desktop searches are redundant; well, under Windows at any rate.
Simply use Google, which will have visited the web server on your compromised Windows PC- the same web server that is sharing everything on your hard drive with the rest of the world.
I bet those Linux weenies are jealous now.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I cannot speak for the other search tools- but I can't say I am really too impressed with Google's desktop search. My problem was it was fairly limited in what it can search, although I am guessing it is the pet project of an engineer at Google- and that it will probably be expanded over time.
Add thunderbird and msn support!
This is gonna make it really easy for your spouse to figure out what porn sites you visit....
Compedition between Google and Microsoft?
You mean like the vast majority of the desktop computing planet? I'm just amazed that Copernic is still around...
Even the sale of Slate notwithstanding, the journalistic independence Slate had was quite admirable on the part of MS; few companies would keep a news source like that on a looser leash.
Slate was very critical of MS during the anti-trust trial, has been reasonably critical of their software (even going so far, as another user mentioned, as to reccomend Firefox).
Are there any desktop search programs out there for emails stored in Mozilla or Thunderbird?
And how long does it take you to grep through all your files? What grep doesn't have is indexing, and locate only searches through filenames. Wake me when you have a content/metadata index under Linux.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
You can search 125+ file formats, including pretty much every office file-format, SQL databases, Email, PDF, MP3 and the list goes on.
It's ligtning fast and will index GB's of data.
If search is really important to you, ISYS is where it is at; http://isysdev.com/
They really ought to come standard with Windows -- they do so much to enhance the usability of windows, at least for power users. I can't think of anything funnier than the day Microsoft begins marketing Gnu/Windows.
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I tried Copernic for about a week and then removed it. A major "showstopper" for me was that Copernic would lock files at random (indexing?). When I would try to delete a directory I would get an error that files are in use. It was happening way too often even after I limited the directories I indexed. Another problem was random slowdowns and explorer crashes. I don't have a proof that Copernic was at fault - only circumstantial evidence.
erm! i presume enfish is Windows XX....doesn't mention on the site anywhere that it is or isn't ... not in FAQ!.. just works everywhere ? asuming the world is windows!
Wakeup: doodle does it.
plus, Microsoft just sold Slate.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
I am beginning to worry the slashdot crowd is filled with too many one-sided Google fanboys who refuse to try a new direction.
That's why my post clearly mentions a sensible directory structure. By allowing you to concentrate your search on just portion of the directory tree, you can grep through your files quite quickly. And I'd like to see a desktop search engine handle a regex.
find | grep
Direct away from face when opening.
If grep is too slow you have too many/large files.
Keeping that amount of data isn't healthy.
Another tool that wasn't mentioned has a very simple to use interface. http://www.raizlabs.com/software/magicfile/ I wrote the software myself almost a year ago. It doesn't do everything these web tools do, but I think it does do certain things better. Take a look, it's currently shareware.
If there is *anything* that my computer can do for me, why would I want to do it myself?
Maybe you don't trust Microsoft, but indexing and personal agents technologies are the futur.
Don't have a closed mind.
I find the following to be a useful desktop search tool: http://www.80-20.com/products/personal_email_searc h.asp
I have personally found the MS Desktop Search offering to be a very handy bit of code. What I personally like about it is the ability to segregate or "bookmark" particular folders on your hard drive for indexing/searching. I do a lot of graphic design work and it rapidly displays results (with thumbnail images) of only the folders I have selected for indexing cutting down on search time and unneccessary queries. This type of segregation is especially welcome when you are dealing with locating resources in a single hard drive folder which at current count stands at 37,832 files spread across 1,786 subfolders. (FYI Poser 5 Runitme, image, bump maps, and texture resources)
Requiem
When I installed google search, I suddenly couldn't connect to the internet. (I don't have broadband) Then when I uninstallled it, voila! the internet worked again!
Don't be such a cheapskate.
The best feature of Google Desktop is that it is integrated into web searches. Whenever I search Google, I get a little section at the top of the results list with destop results.
t ml
Also, the article is wrong. Google Desktop is very configurable. You just have to do some digging. Try this for starters: http://users.tns.net/~skingery/firefox/GDS_Tips.h
Well, if you don't make sure it is set during the install to NOT send data to google,... it IS a security risk to corporate data. Do you trust every joe user you know to make sure it was set right on their machine?
On Windows, my favorite is still Funduc Software's Search and Replace. It let me do rudimentary refactoring long before the IDE's discovered it.
Maybe it's a programmer-only thing, but I'm surprised none of the others will do replace (at least, if they do I didn't see it in the article).
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
It's biggest flaw (especially when mentioned on /.) is that it can't search Thunderbird. However, it still is in beta, and Google has shown a definite open-mindedness to including Thunderbird/Mozilla Suite in a final version. On their feedback page for Google Desktop search, the third generic suggestion is "Support Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird."
Read my blog: HansMast.com
Has anyone tried Omea Pro?
It's from the makers of one of the best Java IDEs, IntelliJ IDEA.
Here's a link: http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
For teaching the ms world that we need desktop searching. However you missed the boat..
IMHO the delivered search functionality of the current microsoft os is lacking these features in this priority:
1. Local file indexing / searching
2. Office Document indexing / searching
3. Email indexing / searching
4. Just a general local harddrive search that doesn't suck
You managed to provie 2 and 3 but to do 1 properly you need to integrate into the file manager (explorer) or become it.
Do it Google!!!! rid me of MS HELL give me firefox with file management capabilities, picasa's fast thumbnail browsing, and ability to search / index EVERYTHING including meta information of video, mp3, jpg, gif etc.
Copernic's Privacy Policy reveals that, "Copernic Technologies, Inc. works with third parties that transmit advertisements to the Copernic Agent and Copernic Desktop Search product families and Copernic Meta."
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
How much of a slowdown will these programs hit WinXP with?
My machine is an otherwise speed-demonish laptop with a 4200 RPM hard drive, and I multitask like a demon... between fullscreen, 512-ram-using games and the Windows desktop.
Needless to say this causes a whole, whole lot of disk thrashing.
Do these desktop-search programs access the disk enough to compound my disk-swapping woes?
(On that note, I have a 7200 RPM external disk. Is there any way I can get WinXP to use it for at least some swap, or put a disk cache over there, or do SOMETHING?)
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I used copernic way back when their web based search tool still worked with google. I found that their tool greatly simplified my web searching workflows. Although, when they switched their UI to the XP look and feel, I lost interest. Besides loosing google groups searching, The user interface went too many steps backwards to be comfortable to use.
It's nice to see these guy's back on the map again.
I guess it will take time to figure out advance and unique features of Copernic, but some obvious rants can be:
1. No thunderbird support
2. Why would I need to allow cookie from copernic if it is a *desktop* search?
Good thing is that it has firefox/mozilla support, which takes care of your browsing. Default options are set non-aggressively (like searching history is checked off by default, which is insightful), and this is something really good : option of NOT searching images smaller than 16x16 pixels, music files of less than 10 seconds content (not configurable, though) - very thoughtful!!
Microsoft doesn't agree, or they wouldn't have created one of these neat services.
And *.log file support for mIRC chats.
ZTreeWin rules.
For those OS X users interested in thematic keyword search (either in desktop docs or on the Web), take a look at theConcept. Copernic Agent is a somewhat similar product.
</shameless promotion>
I'm a gamer, so I worry about these things, too. Keep in mind, this makes the NTFS filesystem much better than FAT32, as it's a journaling filesystem.
Journaling filesystems keep a running log of everything that changes on the disk. This is why you don't need to run scandisk as often.
Google Desktop monitors the filesystem's log and only reads files that have been modified. So, after the initial crawl, it really doesn't use a ton of disk I/O. Indexing Service, and probably the rest, also do this, so they aren't that bad.
Keep in mind that if you are using FAT32, you lose much of this speed and it may eat up lots of resources.
I you want to search network shares (yes, not just Intranet sites) with a browser or Web Services, follow my sig ;-)
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I saw on Copernic's website, "Copernic Agent." Is this program any good? Does anyone have experience with the personal or professional editions? Do you recommend this program?
I like DocYouMeant Hound http://myradus.com/. But, I know the guy who wrote it, so I'm a bit biased. :-)
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What Find function can't search inside a file? I've been searching inside files since DOS.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
What a useful post - thanks for contributing!
My friend's desktop has at least three "New Folder's" and who knows what they contain :x
As for I, when on windows, because I went nuts with the organization of icons in windows on my desktop, I use Blackbox for Windows which brings the black/fluxbox minimalist shell to windows by replacing explorer and creates the iconless environment that I always loved.
Ooooh! Cool... I'll have to try that sometime.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
you should be able to, iirc, its been a while since i did this, but in (i think) the system properties, you can set pagefile usage, meaning you can turn it off from c:\ and activate it on a different drive. A little googling should tell you exactly which of the millions of dialogs/preferences windows that there are in Windows, is the one to change the pagefile usage
It's yet another of the little annoying things about Windows that not many people seem to know about, yet is easy to carry out when you know how to do it...
I've used the free open source Wilbur from redtree.com for ten years now. Now that everybody's doing it, I can tell the secret.
http://www.x1.com/
X1 is a great desktop search tool for windows. It can search way more file types then google or msn. Right now it's costs money, but Yahoo is going to start giving it away for free to get into the destkop search market. I don't know what Yahoo is paying them, but getting $80 of software for free sounds nice.
Google got owned... must be the end of the world.
Sure, but this disk isn't always connected to the machine. Is there any way to have the swap "fall back" to the internal when the external isn't available?
Actually downloaded Copernic yesterday before this article even appeared. I let it run all last night and all day. It was still indexing when I got home from work. I tried to few test searches, but then Copernic locked up and I had to kill it. Now everytime I start up Copernic it just stays locked. I guessing due to database corruption. The last thing I need is an indexing tool that spends several hours indexing my data just to lose it all due to a crash.
Index and search previously visited web pages - without bookmarking them!
You saw something on the web, but you can't remember where, and you didn't make a bookmark. ISYS:hindsite offers Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer users the unique ability to perform full text searches on the contents of previously accessed web pages.
http://isysdev.com/products/productsuite/hindsitePlease, the Mac shareware developers practically invented this genre:
Launchbar (the first)
Quicksilver The current favorite, and free.
Butler About the same as Quicksilver, more features but not as slick.
Copernic Desktop Search doesn't seem to support Unicode, which is a major strength of Google's various offerings.
Wtf ever happenend to Altavista Search My Computer?
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
So I indexed all my files and filed the indexes, I updated my indexes and indexed those updates, and now I need another tool to index all those indexes, and a metadata storage manager cos my database of indexed metadata just outgrew my filesystem.
A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence. -Dante
locate blah | grep \.html
I think the only thing you could do in your case is to set a certain size swap on c and a large swap on the external drive. AFAIK you don't have an option for "fallback" swap.
How come nobody ever mentions dtSearch? Has been around for some time even though it does cost money.
you all might be interested in a site i made..its a resource for deskbar shortcuts found on msn desktop search. check it out here
http://www.deskbarshortcuts.com/
petrox
That's what xargs is for. One of many reasons the command line will always be superior to GUIs.
I don't think I've come across an instance where find [path] -iname "*file*" or grep -r [content] [path] hasn't done the trick. Not much incentive to spend hundreds of smackeroos to do the same thing...
This guy can really argue, even if it's about the smallest minutae. He's refuting everything thrown at him, and all he can hope to prove is that the Windows market share is 85% instead of 90%.
Is better than any of these apps....
.
Check it out
I've used Google Desktop Search and Copernic, and Quicksilver is lust way ahead...
It's got plugins of practically any type of data and customised actions attached to those data types.
..How you made a screenshot of my desktop daggit !
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Shameless plug: Aduna AutoFocus. Java-based application that is free for personal use. Also gives you a nice graphical overview search term intersections. Screenshots can be found on the linked page.
This is mostly a problem of Windows' dumb file-locking, which leads to problems everywhere.
When you open a file, it will be locked and you can't do anything with it (contrary to Unix, where it's usage count is increased and tidyed up after the last one has detached; so it is possible to rename a file while you are downloading it, e.g., because everyhing goes thru the inode).
How do I make Google Desktop Search delete bad entries from it's index? If you move a file from one directory to another GDS keeps saying it's in the original directory. So far the only 'fix' for this is to completely uninstall GDS, re-install, and then wait for it to index all over again.
I have done a small technical comparison of the search technologies, present and future:
_ search.html
http://www.exinos.com/mt/archives/2004/12/desktop
Wierd the way they decided to code for win32 when they could have done it web based eh?
A blog I run for the wealth
Slate says you can't add more file types to search in MSN Desktop Search. While this is mostly true - this function is absent from the program, you can change a few registry entries and it would start searching more types. Obviously, it can't index files with complex file formats, because it wouldn't know how to extract meaningful data, but you can add the ASCII- and XML-based filetypes (their extensions) to RSSearch folder in registry and it would mostly work (at least it does for me). You need to check out how it's done with existing extensions - you specify the handler (MS Office, XML, text) for the filetype.
You can also use registry to specify where to store the index. By default it is stored in Documents and Settings (a user directory), just search and replace all occurences of certain path strings (smth like "Application Data\\Blah-blah-blah) with your preferred path.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The most useful feature of Copernic is its ability to search network drives. I use it to index my company server.
It is invaluable when searching through piles of specifications for a particular term.
I tried google desktop search but without the ability to search PDFs or network drives it isn't much use at the moment.
What I'd really like is something that runs on our linux server, indexing and serving the results through a web interface.
I have been wondering what exactly these things index? If they index every single word of every document, I would assume that the overall database becomes enormous, not to mention it must take awhile to create the index. Anybody have insight into what these databases are actually doing?
I love Linux, but let's face the facts here. Most of the apps aren't pretty.
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http://www.sunrizen.com/testimonials.htm It's shareware, but it's excellent. And it does have any annoying ads, nor does it send any data across the web were someone can steal it. So far, it seems faster, and it's been around longer. Root for the little guys and grab it.
click me
On my win98 computer here at work it's system -> performance -> virtual memory. It was found quickly with MS help from the start bar (help, index, search "swap file"). I don't remember where it is in XP off the top of my head.
A while back I added a second HDD to my game computer, and eagerly moved the swap file to a different IDE channel than my game/OS disk. When they tell you that will speed up your virtual memory performance they aren't lyin. It's pretty sweet. In City of Heroes I can now beat most people (but not everyone) through zone changes. Windows always maintains some swap file, so it's a good idea for any windows box, not just low ram ones (I've got 512M).
=)
I'll definitely check out Beagle when I get the chance.
The postman hits! The postman hits! You have mail.
Desktop search tools is a convenient way to organize our file/mail/multimedia systems. Copernic is bad since it only allows one index for each category. This may be inefficient and provide with irrelevant search results. Dtsearch seems a better choice. Multimedia file searching is only useful if either the EXIF is kept or the file name is meaningful. Therefore, it may not be very effective for those jpg/gif files obtained from internet.
^(oo)^pig~
In reality, while Copernic DOES search Firefox bookmarks/history, its Quick Preview uses (what else) IE. Their web search does too.
IE probably makes it easy to code for external Windows applications; Firefox needs to do the same (I love it anyway).
Is there any way to make this program keeps its index on a PGP secured drive or in some other way keep the index file away from prying eyes (or code)?
Desktop search has already been done, and well
h t. html
Spotlight is quite a lot more than "desktop search." Here's a an article that describes it:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlig
While there are bits and pieces out there, I don't believe anyone has implemented a system as comprehensive as this on the deesktop yet.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas