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What is the currently best Desktop Search software?
Darwin:
A further update - standby and hibernate work fine with Outlook minimized to tray and with the X1 Deskbar displayed as well (ie when you wake the computer up again Outlook is fine), the critical thing seems to be NOT enabling the system tray icon. I notice that with the icon displayed all of the X1 processes are running all the time. When it's not displayed, only X1FileMonitor runs in the background. As far as I can tell, the system tray icon serves to keep all of X1 loaded in the background and to (greatly) speed up the display of the GUI. This is the only drawback that I can see to running X1 at the moment - even with 2GB of RAM I am waiting for upwards of 25 seconds (just timed it) for it to load.
PS Armando - you read my mind! I was just reading over Carol's previous post and wondering the same thing.
Armando:
25 s : Yes, this is the reason why I always keep the tray icon active!
I don't get that many crashes though, and when I do, they don't do anything bad -- I just need to restart X1.
Let's wait for Carol's exalead report part2 :)
Carol Haynes:
I reported a couple of bugs to Exalead - so far only an automated response.
If that is how they respond to a potential customer I don't think it will be staying long ...
The biggest bug is that you can't look for exact phrases. It says put exact phrases in double quotes "like this" but unfortunately it still turns up ALL occurrences of any words in the phrase (in the is case every "like " and "this").
There is an "Advanced Search" option but all it does is take the search details and format it into a search string to use in the normal search box - so exact phrase "like this" entered without quotes just has the quotes added.
The other problem is I don't really believe the indexing is complete or fully updated. I set up a new Outlook profile with all my PST files included and rebuilt the search index based on the new profile - trouble is at least one PST file seems to have been omitted from indexing! I rebuilt the index again and it was indexed that time. Strange but I don't feel confident that indexes are being fully maintained.
If they can get the problems ironed out I quite like the program.
yksyks:
Let me add my brief experience with Exalead one:desktop (EOD) and compare it to Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) -- cons/pros.
No way to add file types to get indexed. For example, there are plain text files with an extension .SUB or .SRT (movie subtitles) that don’t require any complicated parsing, but they are never listed among the results. (CDS can do this.)
No way to move (or rebuild) the entire index on alternate location. It would be useful for some reasons. (CDS can do this.)
The index is not updated as it should be. It updates properly on Outlook, but not on the files. Deleted file remains listed in the results even three days after its removal. Newly created, copied, renamed or downloaded files don’t appear until some change is made in the "Indexed Items" setting or restarting. The Index monitoring just says "up to date". (Performance is set to default. Verified on two PCs running Win XP SP2 with all the latest patches, both with full administrator’s rights.)
Some files with accented characters in theirs filename display "no preview available". They are properly found and listed in results and can be opened normally. But only the same file with accented characters removed can be previewed. The strange fact is that this doesn't apply to Outlook mail attachments; they are all properly displayed regardless of theirs filenames.
The Czech translation made me laugh loud. One can understand that the translator doesn't know the term "regular expression" and translated it as "common expression", which nobody understands. But he mixed up words "within" and "without", so now one of the menu items reads "Search without results". Quite hilarious.
EOD doesn't search as you type, CDS does. Not very useful in CDS, though.
EOD doesn't scroll automatically to position of the first occurrence of the searched term. This is well balanced with its showing the part of the contents with the first occurrence in bold.
EOD doesn't mark multiple searched term with different colors, CDS does and allows individual searching.
On the other hand, EOD can preview even complicated PDFs much better than CDS. There's no need to show the actual layout, if you're searching, the plain text would do.
EOD can index Outlook Calendar and Tasks, CDS cannot.
EOD displays and searches e-mail messages in proper encoding, CDS often doesn't.
EOD can use regular expressions, CDS can't.
I also reported these bugs to Exalead, so far not even the automated response.
Carol Haynes:
No way to move (or rebuild) the entire index on alternate location. It would be useful for some reasons. (CDS can do this.)
--- End quote ---
In EOD you can put the index where you like (at least in the latest build you can) - I moved it to a separate folder on a completely different drive. You can't 'move' it though it has to be rebuilt.
Some files with accented characters in theirs filename display "no preview available". They are properly found and listed in results and can be opened normally. But only the same file with accented characters removed can be previewed. The strange fact is that this doesn't apply to Outlook mail attachments; they are all properly displayed regardless of theirs filenames.
--- End quote ---
That explains a lot!
EOD doesn't mark multiple searched term with different colors
--- End quote ---
Seems to for me - but this seems to have killed exact phrase match.
The index is not updated as it should be. It updates properly on Outlook, but not on the files.
--- End quote ---
That's what I figured - except I seem to have probl;ems with Outlook updating properly too.
I think on balance I am going to remove Exalead.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is no decent solution (even paid for at a reasonable price) which satisfies my need for Outlook indexing multiple PST files without having them load in my Outlook profile every time I use Outlook.
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