Author Topic: What is the currently best Desktop Search software? (Read 1,110,399 times)

Darwin · « **Reply #300 on:** March 30, 2008, 01:34 PM »

That's strange, iphigenie - the version I bought last summer came with a full set of Stellent viewers that worked fine when I had PowerDesk installed.

J-Mac · « **Reply #301 on:** March 30, 2008, 06:13 PM »

Quote from: kartal on March 29, 2008, 06:22 AM

Windows Desktop Search cannot even search outlook express contacts or thunderbird emails, kind of useless for me. I uninstalled it from my machine also because it runs all the time. It was not like you could disable it like copernic

I had to lose WDS 3 for the same reason -- I could NOT turn it off, period. I was using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for text input and WDS would continually steal focus and trash whatever I had dictated for however long it was before I noticed that WDS was in focus. Aarrggh!

There is no setting to pause or stop indexing. And it runs as a service, so I went into services and manually stopped it. Of course it restarted in a few seconds! I changed the Restart tab in services properties from 'Restart' to 'Do Nothing', but it STILL restarted! Turns out is has a number of dependencies that, if you stop those it wreaks havoc on your system. So I had to chuck it.

I requested help with this at the Microsoft newsgroup for WDS and a couple of MVPs replied and confirmed that there is no way to stop it from indexing. Just another case of "Microsoft knows what is best for you and your machine". Ugh!

Jim

Curt · « **Reply #302 on:** March 30, 2008, 07:02 PM »

Quote from: iphigenie on March 30, 2008, 11:41 AM

... the version I have doesnt seem to have viewers for much of anything

Quote from: Curt on March 27, 2008, 07:42 PM

Update your PowerDesk Pro to 6.0.4.2 >here< 7.17 MB

- copyright: -2005 ...

Darwin · « **Reply #303 on:** March 31, 2008, 05:23 AM »

Yes - Curt is right: even with the update, the latest version will be from a few years ago, so the Stellent viewers will be out of date (sort of - they're still fine for Office 2003 docs, etc.).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #304 on:** March 31, 2008, 08:05 AM »

Just reinstalled PowerDesk Pro 6 and noticed that if you run "Update" from the help menu it mentions PowerDesk version 7. Can't find anything about it though on their website ?

Strangely the version I had on my system was the same version as the one suggested above. However the one linked a few posts back is only about 7Mb whereas my original version I donwloaded at purchase is 35Mb (and it is the same build).

PhilB66 · « **Reply #305 on:** March 31, 2008, 08:18 AM »

PowerDesk Pro 7

Grorgy · « **Reply #306 on:** March 31, 2008, 08:34 AM »

if you type in the address in the auto update it gives you a cheaper price

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #307 on:** March 31, 2008, 04:12 PM »

Thanks - stange that the main site (V-Com) doesn't have any reference to that given that the same update page sends you there as their home page!

Darwin · « **Reply #308 on:** March 31, 2008, 04:44 PM »

So... has anyone actually taken the plunge on this one (PD 7)? Is it much of an update? Doesn't look like it unless one is running Vista and/or wants the latest Stellent viewers (I have QuickView Plus 10, so this doesn't apply to me). Anything about this new release that makes it a "must have" update? I can't see much in the "What's New" section that makes this look particularly compelling...

Dormouse · « **Reply #309 on:** March 31, 2008, 05:25 PM »

And do you really want to buy from a company that seems not to be advertising the availability of v7 at the same time as it is actively selling (special offer, Bitsdujour etc) v6 at a discount price?

kartal · « **Reply #310 on:** March 31, 2008, 05:26 PM »

Plus, they do not offer a trial version. The trial version of v6 was a cutdown free version which did not make sense to me at all.

Grorgy · « **Reply #311 on:** March 31, 2008, 07:36 PM »

well, i've been trying to get to the page where the sale starts, mainly to see if i can get both the upgrade price and the welcome to the new website discount, but the pages keep failing to load. But if i can get it nice and cheap I might jump in, thats how I got version 6, for just a few dollars.

Darwin · « **Reply #312 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:04 PM »

Quote from: Dormouse on March 31, 2008, 05:25 PM

And do you really want to buy from a company that seems not to be advertising the availability of v7 at the same time as it is actively selling (special offer, Bitsdujour etc) v6 at a discount price?

In fairness (though this could be construed as both an argument for and against what you're saying here), Avanquest has been flogging PowerDesk Pro 6 for $9.95 for over a year. You'll find at least one thread about the discount on the DC forum.

Quote from: Grorgy on March 31, 2008, 07:36 PM

both the upgrade price and the welcome to the new website discount

What's the "welcome to the new website discount"? I haven't seen that before. Like you, I picked up PowerDesk Pro 6 for next to nothing and would consider upgrading if I can do so for a pittance as well...

I guess we are well and truly off-topic here now...

Grorgy · « **Reply #313 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:20 PM »

If you click on the visit the Vcom website on the autoupdate screen, after it has checked it has a little note saying to visit our new website and to use the coupon code they supply. Its a further 35% if it will work, my computer is just hanging on it for a while then saying page can't be found.

Darwin · « **Reply #314 on:** March 31, 2008, 09:42 PM »

Thanks Grorgy - you can't use both together anyway... the 35% off discount code is NEWVC35 (publicly displayed here: http://www.v-com.com/), if you type that into the Promotion field for the upgrade, the upgrade price of $19.95 is replaced by a new price of $25.97.

Grorgy · « **Reply #315 on:** March 31, 2008, 10:18 PM »

ahhh ok, thanks for checking Darwin, an extra discount would have been a good thing, but i guess they have to get some income sooner or later

Dormouse · « **Reply #316 on:** March 31, 2008, 11:00 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on March 31, 2008, 09:42 PM

the upgrade price of $19.95 is replaced by a new price of $25.97.

So $9.95+$19.95 is more than $25.97. But if the upgrade is not worth it, $9.95 on its own is less. Who can know if it is worth it if there is no trial available?

justice · « **Reply #317 on:** April 01, 2008, 08:59 AM »

Please note that WDS 4 is just a PREVIEW, not a final.

Dormouse · « **Reply #318 on:** April 01, 2008, 09:32 AM »

Quote from: Dormouse on March 31, 2008, 11:00 PM

So $9.95+$19.95 is more than $25.97. But if the upgrade is not worth it, $9.95 on its own is less. Who can know if it is worth it if there is no trial available?

Well - as stated HERE the price of v6 can now be $0.0. Probably the best starting point for anyone who does not have it and actually wants it. One thing I would say for Avanquest is the the prices for $ are effectively the same as the prices in £.

DonL · « **Reply #319 on:** April 26, 2008, 08:36 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on March 13, 2008, 08:43 PM

Not really, Tom! XYPlorer started out life as a file searcher:

Quote
Historically, XYplorer is not a file manager with a search feature, but a search tool with a file manager attached to it. Not for nothing it was called "Tracker" before...

Source: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=4849.msg87001#msg87001

That's right, and I finally found some time to check out that "Search GT" (ver 2.3). I had done so already once almost a year ago and was utterly disappointed by its slowness compared to XYplorer. So I was curious whether it got any faster with the lastest version -- especially after having read all the nice talk about it here at donationcoder.

Well, there might be a trick I don't know, but on my system Search GT is slow, remarkably slow, compared to XYplorer:

Searching a folder with about 10,000 files spread over 600 sub folders:
Pattern: *.jpg (matches 196 items)
Search GT: 0.5 sec
XYplorer: 0.084 sec (= 6 times faster!)

Pattern: a (matches 3480 items)
Search GT: 4.7 sec
XYplorer: 0.127 sec (= 37 times faster!!)

So I can cooly say: I'm still waiting for a non-index file searcher that's faster than XYplorer!

EDIT: got to refine my above statement a bit. It turns out that Search GT is indeed very strong when searching whole drives for the first time (i.e. before Windows disk read caching sets in). It mysteriously gets slower when searching only certain folders on a drive. It's also quite slow when the search returns many results. So, when you look for one or few items somewhere on a whole drive, GT is a very good choice (if a basic name/date/size filter with no boolean operators is all you need) -- otherwise take XYplorer.

Shades · « **Reply #320 on:** April 26, 2008, 09:22 PM »

Even for desktop searches I use a small grep tool called: BareGrep

Really love this piece of freeware. Get it from www.baremetalsoft.com

My system is not indexed in any way and it takes 1.5 seconds to search my complete C: drive for all *.jpg files (and finding 6045 of them).

It is also portable (one executable file which is about 200 kilobyte in size).

dantheman · « **Reply #321 on:** April 26, 2008, 10:16 PM »

Quote from: Shades on April 26, 2008, 09:22 PM

Even for desktop searches I use a small grep tool called: BareGrep

Really love this piece of freeware. Get it from www.baremetalsoft.com

My system is not indexed in any way and it takes 1.5 seconds to search my complete C: drive for all *.jpg files (and finding 6045 of them).

It is also portable (one executable file which is about 200 kilobyte in size).

I like that!
Never heard of it before but it looks cool!
You may not be in the know, but you never know!
Is there a way to have words with "foreign" accents searched too?

Curt · « **Reply #322 on:** April 26, 2008, 10:39 PM »

No, even the BareGrep PRO version cannot search special characters.

"æ":
[attachimg=#]

- but it is fast!

Dormouse · « **Reply #323 on:** April 26, 2008, 11:20 PM »

Quote from: Curt on April 26, 2008, 10:39 PM

- but it is fast!

But slow for me. I started it on a search on my C drive (no option to search all drives that I could find), I then switched to SearchGT doing the same search across 3 drives (total GB over ten times greater). SearchGT completed its search quite a while before BareGrep/

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #324 on:** April 26, 2008, 11:46 PM »

I found it awesomly fast on my data files - especially as it searched content as well. It seemed to me to be as fast as most of the indexed search apps.