I've covered a number of search tools in the past and rely on two - x1 and
Lookout - to manage the vast accumulation of files and e-mails on my Tablet
PC. Yesterday, Copernic, makers of a commercial web search and store utility, released
Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) - a free,
commercial-quality system-wide search applicatiion. CDS lowers the bar - it's free - and raises the ante - it rivals
commercial offerings in breadth of features and quality of fit and finish.
Copernic's web site says that a commercial version of CDS with expanded features will be available soon. The free
version looks very robust and should address many people's needs. The web site has an excellent selection of screen
shots and support information.
I downloaded and installed CDS yesterday and here are my initial impressions:
Quality: CDS has a very refined user interface that is easy to understand and attractive and
inutitive in use.
Speed: Indexing took quite a bit longer than commercial rival x1 on my 60 GB hard drive and 500 MB of
Outlook .pst files. Searching is a tad slower as it takes a few seconds for CDS to switch between Files, E-Mail, Music,
and Picture indexes.
Functionality: Like x1, CDS begins filtering and displaying matches as oon as you begin typing. Found
results are displayed in a preview pane. Previews can be set to Standard or Detailed. Standard is fast, Detailed slows
things down but shows the actual image or file with good fidelity. Unlike the other tools I've looked at, CDS installs
a search bar right into the Windows Task Bar so you can initiate a search at any time - a very nice touch.
I plan to live with CDS as my primary search tool for a week or so before I render a final verdict on how well it
works on a day-to-day basis but Copernic has delivered an outstanding tool at the best price for folks who struggle to
find their stuff. If you've been put off by the price of commercial search utilities, this shouldd be on your
evaluation list.
Copernic Desktop Search - a free search tool that offers commercial quality
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Thanks for the concise and informative preview. I found the first impressions you gave to be spot on with my experience. I particularly like Copernic's polite handling of background indexing - I never feel like my machine is being bogged down, but they are making use of CPU cycles whenever I walk away to talk to someone. I like that a lot. I too have found the indexing to be somewhat slow - in fact, I've been running it for 2 days now, (albeit only during business hours - as my laptop hasn't been plugged in for the past two evenings) and I don't think it has fully completed indexing. I'm hoping that once it does complete the initial indexing, it will be able to stay up to date without too much effort.
3. I've been using X1 for months, and will stick with X1 because of its excellent desktop searching (especially fast initial scanning).
For those new to desktop search, suggest you should use only the best search program out there. How much is your time worth?
X1 can do many more things than Copernic, and does it both better and faster.
X1 gives you alphabetical list of all your email attachments and indexes its contents, which is really useful and not available in CDS.
X1 also indexes Netscape Mail and Eudora email (CDS does not), etc.
the list goes on and on in X1's favour.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Mr. Wang
4. CDS is a great free tool. Mr. Wang's observations, especially as they relate to speed of indexing beasr out my experience. x1 is so much faster.
There are a lot of people who balk at the idea of spending $99.00 for a search tool though and for those who are looking for a free alternative, CDS is a great alternative.
The Search Bar remains the one thing I'd like to see x1 implement. I prefer it to keeping the x1 UI docked to the top of the screen (although this does achieve about the same thing).
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant
7. there is another great can't-do-without tool for those who knows the value of time and makes much of work place comfort.
www.diskmeta.com is a desktop search engine for both local hard drives and network mapped drives.
It's an index-based search so it delivers matches immediately.
diskmeta searches with impressive accuracy by seperate words as well as by exact phrases.
Refining options are Boolean operators, date and proximity filters.
Preview: text portions with match highlighting, file names and pathes, sorted by relevance, both automatical opening in corresp. application and text reconstruction options available.
Most file formats supported.
The main boast is the maximum size of data indexing - up to 100 gigabytes.
$48.50 for desktop version for all file formats and $0.00 for full-functional Lite version (for html, doc, txt),
or $97.50 for desktop + intranet search.
Sure there is 30 day free trial.
Have a nice search!
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by diskmeta fan
8. I've been using it since early September both in the office and on my home master server (550k files). It's simpy invaluable, I can't work without it.
Unlike some claims to the contrary, it does have some over head - especially on slower machines. My office laptop is only a 1.3ghz machine, and the first time it built's it's index, it took well over 350megs of memory and 2 hours to do it (indexing over 10 thousand files on 2 large share drives, too). Nevertheless, the overhead was worth it and now I can nearly instantly locate any legal or sales document I need to find - an impossible task otherwise. Copernic: bring on the commercial version - I'll be a loyal and enthusiastic customer.
9. RE: comments from "diskmeta fan" above
Copernic Desktop Search can also index mapped network drives; I've got an index of my folder on the office's shared drive right now, in fact. It also provides a full-text preview with hilighting and search with boolean operators, like DiskMeta (see http://help.copernic.com/topic/desktopsearch11en/boolean.htm ). Oddly, the NEAR operator is missing even though it is available in Copernic Agent (another excellent product).
Date options can't be set in the search itself, but can be set in an options pane below the search field. I just did a search for all files containing the word "reports" from Sept 1st through today, and 32 matches across my local and network drives in about 1 second. Very slick. :-D
Another thing worth noting is that, based on their web site's promotional copy, DiskMeta doesn't index e-mails and e-mail attachments or media files. OTOH, it does have the unique ability to search within compressed zip and RAR files (a feature I've suggested to Copernic for CDS).
Not trying to trash your fave product or anything, just letting you know that there's a free alternative out there that is at least as capable.
10. Can I limit where Copernic searches? I'm looking for a search agent for my local intranet and I need the ability to limit searches to particular network drives. Can it do this?
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ken
11. Ken:
Are you asking if you can configure CDS for yourself or for other users. The answer to the former is a qualified "yes" assuming you have read/write permissions for the volumes you want to index. To do the latter, you'll need a server-side utility that isn't part of the free tool. This may be part of what Copernic is developing for their commercial product. I'd get in touch with them directly.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant
12. I also used X1 for several months and grew dependent on the ability to full-text search my accumulated emails and files (particularly the PDF reports that have become so common), but grew annoyed with the screen-top docked UI, its resource-consumption (I had to restrict new material indexing to late night hours), and was one of the users who had problems caused by its tendency not to "let go" of Outlook. Although usually suspicious of freeware, but needing an X1 replacement I installed CDS principally because of its ability to deal with PDFs, and have been in love with it ever since. I favor its UI compared to x1's and haven't noticed the slow indexing other readers have commented on; in fact I don't notice it's there at all unless I am conducting a search -- which have been impressively quick and complete. I also appreciated not having to perform the cumbersome configuration X1 required to eliminate "garbage" hits for common words on my computer. "Out of the box" CDS seems to have a better set-up for which directories are relevant to file searches. I also have it configured to search archived files on two networked hard drives (10's of GB's of data), which it performs in a second or two.
If this is the free version I can't wait to see the "better" commercial release.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Brian Gould
13. I've grown attached to Filehand and keep coming back to it after i go back and try X-1, Lookout and Blinkx again. Have you reviewed it? Comments if so??
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Roger Gale
14. Roger: I have written about Filehand a number of times/ It's a great tool that offers a decidedly different approach to search. The latest article is here:
http://office.weblogsinc.com/entry/3508485516215716/
I am not currently using Filehand. There are some as yet unresolved issues with Outlook 2003 that prevent it from being completely usable.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant
15. Contacted Copernic Tech Support:
Search for local files contacts Internet
I have a dial-up connection. When I perform a search for local files/content, CDS invokes my internet connection, trys to sign me on.
Is this by design? If so, maybe you should note this in the faq.
===
CDS will ask to connect to internet when you load it. It will connect to the internet even if you only search for local files. The connection is needed to either verify the availability of a new version or in order to load the search engine home page for the CDS web search category.
The check for update process is done once at the beginning of the installation to set an initial date for the process. Afterward this verification is done once every three days.
For now there is no way to prevent this connection attempt but this will be modified in a future version.
If it interests you I invite you to read our software and web privacy policy:
http://www.copernic.com/en/company/privacy/privacy-software.html
http://www.copernic.com/en/company/privacy/privacy-web.html
Copernic
16. I think CDS is FANTASTIC! I publish a newsletter and have many, many files and e-mails to track. Invariably, I have trouble finding one thing or another -- CDS HAS WORKED PERFECTLY EVERY TIME!
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ed Rogers
17. Does this program leave any spyware on your computer AND are files secure to anyone who wants to hack through it?
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Richard
18. Richard:
To answer your two questions - no and no (I think).
No, there's no spyware in CDS. Copernic is a reputable company. See the discussion above about why and when CDS does connect to the "mother ship".
If I understand your second question, the answer is no. There's nothing secure about these desktop search tools. Anyone who can access your PC can use the search tool to find whatever they'd like on your system. Basic PC security applies here as follows:
1. Use a strong password on your account (mixed case, numbers, and symbols and avoid "real words").
2. Log off your account or at least lock your workstation whenever you leave it (especially in a work setting). Consider setting your screensaver to require a password to get back to the desktop as well - it's great passive security.
3. Use an encryption tool to protect confidential files on your PC.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant
19. Haven't tried Copernic yet, but a couple posts above led me to try Filehand and diskMetaLite.
Filehand is great and does what I need the way I like it.
However, the free version of diskMeta is much too limited: it indexes doc, html and txt types only and you can't define what those mean. In Filehand you can tell it that txt includes cs, bat vb, php, ascx or whatever. It also includes mht in html and I have a lot of downloaded articles in that format, so it is perfect. Thanks to the person who mentioned it.
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by robert
20. I was thrilled to see this product launch, as I'm a big fan of copernic's other serach tools and have used them for years. They always manage to combine impressive style and functionality.
So far, I'm impressed with CDS. One minor quibble I have is that I would prefer the ability to do a general search and then filter by email, MS doc, .pdf, etc. This version of CDS demands I first choose which format I want to search within.
Other than that, so far so good!
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Craig Kennedy
1. I was thrilled to see this product launch, as I'm a big fan of copernic's other serach tools and have used them for years. They always manage to combine impressive style and functionality.
So far, I'm impressed with CDS. One minor quibble I have is that I would prefer the ability to do a general search and then filter by email, MS doc, .pdf, etc. This version of CDS demands I first choose which format I want to search within.
Other than that, so far so good!
Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Craig Kennedy