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Avafind mini review

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Babis:
Avafind mini review by babis, upon brotherS request

The main window launches by hitting shift & escape instantly. Then by start typing the second letter the program starts to present results, which can appear in 2 views, detailed showing filename, size and location and basic showing only filename, as the following snaps. The main results window offers some nice options when right-click on a result and anytime if choose Explorer Options it will show you all the typical explorer options. All operations of Avafind can be done through keyboard, no need for using mouse at anytime.

Avafind mini review

Avafind mini review

Avafind mini review

Avafind remembers your choice, this means that if I type word and then decide to launch the winword.exe from the results (by pressing enter), then the next time when I type word, the winword.exe will be highlighted and by pressing the tab it will bring you directly at the result selected at the previous similar search string.

Avafind mini review

This is a very big advantage over similar programs, as the first time you have to scroll to the list of first results until find the target but then it will remember choice and drive you directly to the result previously selected, similarly to find and run robot (but not quite, as in farr you don’t have to press tab and also the desired result appears from the first or second letter typed)

The main advantage of Avafind however is the index-on-the-fly. It’s the Scout Bot on the upper right corner where all the in/out files are displayed (similarly to recent documents from the windows start menu but more extended). There you have some options by rightclicking, such as browse folder (inside ava’s main window, copy path, create new folder and others as shown on the screen shot). An important option is to choose to block file or folder from being displayed to the Scout Bot, which also applies and to the main panel of results (for example I always exclude the the prefetch directory from the searhc results).

Avafind mini review

Avafind mini review

Then comes My Picks, located at the bottom right; it’s a favorites section simplified where you can add files/folders by drag and drop, otherwise files/folders will be added according to launch history, hierarchically. By right-click on a file, you can remove it from the Picks.

Avafind mini review

Other features of Avafind are the toolbar buttons: Music, Videos, Pictures, Programs, Documents and Downloads, showing all your audio, video, image etc files accordingly (I never use these buttons btw).

Also Avafind can be used as folder size program (like treesizepro, foldersizes etc). For example just type am fil (part name of the program files, to show that you don’t have to type whole paths or start from the beginning of path) and the program files folder is displayed. Then choose arrange results by size and you have, the folders’ sizes feature, missing from a typical windows installation.

Avafind mini review

The program have not been updated from 2003 and the development seems abandoned but even 4 years old, it excels as simple but very powerful file finder

Edited reason forgotten to add  home page http://www.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/ and advanced features

Avafind mini review

Here is a link to a another review and mini comparison with locate. Note that after the trial period ends, Ava still seal searches but the advanced features are disabled.
http://www.techtree.com/India/AvaFind_15/551-57605-610-2.html

mouser:
Really nice work, and great to see all those pictures, thanks for posting this!

Suggestions for improvement:
There is a mini-review template available when you make a post (see the drop down box that says "Add Preset Text..")
This template shows what info should be in a mini review up front (ie webpage, price, etc).

Also, a big thing is that it's much better to ATTACH images to posts instead of linking to offsite images, since those offsite images are likely to dissapear eventually or else make the owner unhappy about us stealing bandwidth.

urlwolf:
Hmm, I only update my db every 3 days with locate and that's ok for me... not sure if the scout bot would be any advantage for me.

Does ava have presets (e..g., dir: papers, *.pdf)? Can it be placed on a thumbdrive?

I'm sure the recent files/folder size stuff can be replicated with locate if one really tries...

surftwo:
looks like a nice program but here's a beter one and it's free.........from X1...
http://www.x1.com/resource_center/downloads.html

svv1999:
There exist some problems with this program:

- refreshing the search cache cannot be delayed to idle times
- on startup the program sometimes crashes without identifiable reason
- mount points are not detected. This yields, that the content
  of mounted partitions appears one more time for each mount point

-manfred

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