What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

[Ralf Maximus]

I just updated my vote, since I now use Copernic.  Seems to be the best jack-of-all-trades compromise between performance, beauty, ease of use, and stability.

[J-Mac]

I just updated my vote, since I now use Copernic.  Seems to be the best jack-of-all-trades compromise between performance, beauty, ease of use, and stability.

-Ralf Maximus (November 27, 2008, 07:53 AM)

Really? I have had nothing but trouble with since the latter updates of Copernic 2. And now that they have started charging for it and crippled the Free version I don’t bother with it anymore.

Jim

[Ralf Maximus]

The only trouble I've had is the occasional file-lock.  If I didn't have Unlocker installed, I'd probably be more upset about that.

But I've excluded huge swatches of my harddrive from Copernic's questing fingers of doom, particularly my sourcecode folders.  That seems to have helped tremendously.

The v3 crippleware is fine for my needs.  Since I added the 2TB external RAID and moved all the server-based files to local drives, I no longer need to index network shares.

So, for me, it's a decent solution.  *shrug*

[J-Mac]

My biggest issues when running CDS2 were that it indexed whenever it wanted to; I couldn’t stop it at all except by ending the process in Task Manager. If I wanted to do anything that was CPU-intensive, like burning a CD or DVD - I had to end Copernic's process because it would steal so much CPU and cause burns to fail. Also, the last version I had couldn’t find a lot of files even though they were indexed. I gave up on it.

Hope you have better luck!

Jim

[Ralf Maximus]

I found that by setting Copernic's task priority to 4 (idle) helped a lot.  Also, having a multi-core fire-breather of a workstation doesn't hurt.

Mouser's task balancing thingie ftw!

[4wd]

.... like burning a CD or DVD - I had to end Copernic's process because it would steal so much CPU and cause burns to fail.

-J-Mac (November 27, 2008, 02:21 PM)

You either have an extremely old burner or have disabled whatever burn-interruption-protection-mechanism it uses - I've never had a burn fail because the CPU suddenly didn't have enough time to do it.

I've had ImgBurn sitting in the middle of a burn waiting for 15 minutes so that HDD load, (was transferring files at the same time), could reduce enough to let the buffers fill - the burn finished and the disc was OK.

[f0dder]

Hm, I doubt CPU strain would be very high from file indexing (unless something is very wrong with the indexing application), and CD burning doesn't require a lot of CPU power anyway... but indexing of course has a lot of disk load (why oh why wasn't I/O prioritization added before Vista?).

BurnProof/whatever-each-vendor-calls-it does save you from coasters, but it's still best not to rely on it - burn quality is lower if BurnProof has to kick in.

[Ralf Maximus]

I've always wondered... what the heck *is* BurnProof?

[f0dder]

I've always wondered... what the heck *is* BurnProof?

-Ralf Maximus (November 27, 2008, 06:32 PM)

The ability to stop the burning process and resume it, with the laser position within... oh, some hundred nanometres (iirc) of the last burn position, as specified by the CD/DVD specs. Apparently that's a non-trivial task?, since it was added quite some years after burners became mainstream.

[Armando]

Hm, I doubt CPU strain would be very high from file indexing (unless something is very wrong with the indexing application)

-f0dder (November 27, 2008, 05:56 PM)

Archivarius doesn't strain the CPU too much (yes, there'S a lot of HD activity...) but X1 does. And does it in a very irritating way. The textextractor process -- in particular -- is fairly voracious.

(why oh why wasn't I/O prioritization added before Vista?).

-f0dder (November 27, 2008, 05:56 PM)

I'm learning something. I didn't know that Vista had I/O prioritization.

[Carol Haynes]

If you have multiple CPUs you can assign different tasks to different CPUs in Windows XP - or is that not what you are talking about? You can also give Tasks priortity (at least in a coarse way Idle, Low, Normal, High and RealTime).

I seem to recall a utility that a certain cat fancier made available on here called Process Tamer too ...

[Darwin]

Archivarius doesn't strain the CPU too much (yes, there'S a lot of HD activity...) but X1 does. And does it in a very irritating way. The textextractor process -- in particular -- is fairly voracious.

-Armando (November 27, 2008, 08:06 PM)

Not on my installations (XP Pro and Vista) - X1 is as light as a feather! Archivarius is a jewel, but I need the more advanced previewing capabilities that X1 offers and thus have relegated Archivarius to reserve status. dtSearch is sort of in between the two... very good previewing capabilities and easy on resources. However, it takes the longest of the three to index my drive.

NB Archivarius 4.14 is out and now indexes Acronis True Image files.

[Armando]

Archivarius doesn't strain the CPU too much (yes, there'S a lot of HD activity...) but X1 does. And does it in a very irritating way. The textextractor process -- in particular -- is fairly voracious.

-Armando (November 27, 2008, 08:06 PM)

Not on my installations (XP Pro and Vista) - X1 is as light as a feather! Archivarius is a jewel, but I need the more advanced previewing capabilities that X1 offers and thus have relegated Archivarius to reserve status. dtSearch is sort of in between the two... very good previewing capabilities and easy on resources. However, it takes the longest of the three to index my drive.

NB Archivarius 4.14 is out and now indexes Acronis True Image files.

-Darwin (November 27, 2008, 08:40 PM)

dunno... Have you manually started X1's indexer ? TextExtractor is quiet for the whole time ? whatever is indexed ? Maybe it's indexing files here which are hard to... index/extract ???

But the fact is... it's been quite taxing lately...

[Darwin]

Oh, I'm not disputing your observations (just contradicting 'em  ) - I know LOTS of users have reported the same problem. In fact, I left X1 for Archivarius two years ago for that reason. Somehow, when I reinstalled X1 five or so months ago the problem had vanished and I've yet to see it. However, I do rub my rabbit's foot nightly before bed! X1 is set to index automatically on my systems and is set to start automatically as well. TextExtractor is the culprit when there IS CPU activity from X1 on my systems, but it rarely exceeds more than 15%.

FWIW - I have Indexing Priority set to "Delay indexing up to 60 minutes if PC is in use" and indexing updates set to 60 minute intervals. I have the "Index local files in real-time" option enabled as well.

I have about 60GB of data indexed on each machine (they largely mirror each other) of which 10 GB are PDF files and a further 10 GB are powerpoint presentations and word documents.

[J-Mac]

.... like burning a CD or DVD - I had to end Copernic's process because it would steal so much CPU and cause burns to fail.

-J-Mac (November 27, 2008, 02:21 PM)

You either have an extremely old burner or have disabled whatever burn-interruption-protection-mechanism it uses - I've never had a burn fail because the CPU suddenly didn't have enough time to do it.

I've had ImgBurn sitting in the middle of a burn waiting for 15 minutes so that HDD load, (was transferring files at the same time), could reduce enough to let the buffers fill - the burn finished and the disc was OK.

-4wd (November 27, 2008, 04:55 PM)

No, my burner is not brand new but it is not that old: Sony DVD RW DRU-820A w/latest firmware. And yes, it also tries to balance things out, but CDS2 would really jump the CPU quickly at times, and burning a DVD can definitely be affected when sudden changes in resources occur.

Jim

[J-Mac]

Hm, I doubt CPU strain would be very high from file indexing (unless something is very wrong with the indexing application), and CD burning doesn't require a lot of CPU power anyway... but indexing of course has a lot of disk load (why oh why wasn't I/O prioritization added before Vista?).

BurnProof/whatever-each-vendor-calls-it does save you from coasters, but it's still best not to rely on it - burn quality is lower if BurnProof has to kick in.

-f0dder (November 27, 2008, 05:56 PM)

Agreed - it is never good to burn in a "stuttered" fashion like that. I prefer to have nothing else running when I burn; I let the burning app have all it might want!

Jim

[J-Mac]

If you have multiple CPUs you can assign different tasks to different CPUs in Windows XP - or is that not what you are talking about? You can also give Tasks priortity (at least in a coarse way Idle, Low, Normal, High and RealTime).

I seem to recall a utility that a certain cat fancier made available on here called Process Tamer too ...

-Carol Haynes (November 27, 2008, 08:10 PM)

I do use Process Tamer. But I do tend to get a little (OK - a lot!) impatient when I try to pause indexing and the search engine just ignores me! Hate that!    All of the desktop searches can continue indexing when you don’t want them to do so, but Copernic 2 was the first that seemed to go out of control on me. Plus as I mentioned it wouldn’t find certain files at all, even though they were definitely in the index. MP3's for example.

I wrote to Copernic but got no reply, which was unusual in my experience with them. Then I noticed that there were a lot of posts around the various forums about similar issues. I think it might have been V. 2.5 right after it was released.

All of the desktop search engines seem to hit a point where the index gets corrupted and you have to dump the index and re-index all your files. Also, I have a few HDD's here, so it's a lot of data that they have to index on my desktop PC. I think that the larger the index you have, the more likely it is to get corrupted after a while.

X1 was always the best for me. It seemed to give me the least trouble of all I have tried. At least of the indexing type. But for some reason I cannot get a hold of them anymore! I used to be a member of their forum but earlier this year I tried and it said my email address was banned - I never posted more than a few innocent questions, so I don’t know what that is about. Since they don’t offer it free anymore I decided to purchase the Pro version but I can't login there and they haven't replied to my email requests. What's frustrating is that they still send me requests to participate in their web meetings!

Thanks!

Jim

PS - Carol, I never even considered separating the processes by processor. I've never tried that. Does it work well?  Thanks!  Jim

[J-Mac]

Archivarius doesn't strain the CPU too much (yes, there'S a lot of HD activity...) but X1 does. And does it in a very irritating way. The textextractor process -- in particular -- is fairly voracious.

-Armando (November 27, 2008, 08:06 PM)

Not on my installations (XP Pro and Vista) - X1 is as light as a feather! Archivarius is a jewel, but I need the more advanced previewing capabilities that X1 offers and thus have relegated Archivarius to reserve status. dtSearch is sort of in between the two... very good previewing capabilities and easy on resources. However, it takes the longest of the three to index my drive.

NB Archivarius 4.14 is out and now indexes Acronis True Image files.

-Darwin (November 27, 2008, 08:40 PM)

dunno... Have you manually started X1's indexer ? TextExtractor is quiet for the whole time ? whatever is indexed ? Maybe it's indexing files here which are hard to... index/extract ???

But the fact is... it's been quite taxing lately...

-Armando (November 27, 2008, 08:45 PM)

Desktop search engines seem to act so differently on different computers, they must be sensitive to certain configurations. More so than other applications.

Jim

[Carol Haynes]

PS - Carol, I never even considered separating the processes by processor. I've never tried that. Does it work well?  Thanks!  Jim

-J-Mac (November 27, 2008, 11:01 PM)

Yes - You can assign an application to a particular CPU and then it runs on that CPU alone.

I have used this a number of times when doing long winded processes like video re-encoding and didn't want to tie up my system for a day. You do have to physically assign other intensive tasks to the other CPU to get the benefitand it doesn't overcome the problem of disk intensive activities slowig everything down (but in my case keeping different processes on different physical harddisks helps).

[f0dder]

I generally find it more useful to reduce an application's priority rather than tying it to specific CPU cores - especially if the program is multi-threaded!

[Carol Haynes]

Depends on the application you are using - some apps are well behaved and allow you change the priority internally. For example TMPGEnc video software let's you chose priority when windows are active and when windows are not which is ideal because you can run at full pelt by clicking on the window title and let it pootle on idle cycles when you want to do something else. Some software you can change in Task Manager (I don't know why I always feel slightly wary imposing my choice by this method - esp. as MS pop up a windows warning that you may make your system unstable by doing so). Other software is bloody minded and does its own thing by resetting the priority even when you change it - these are ideal for confining to a single core and let the rest of the system use the other one.

[Darwin]

Ashampoo keeps trying to sell me "Ashampoo Core Tuner" for $9.95. From what little I can glean from the internet, this type of application is snakeoil, no?

[Carol Haynes]

One of the few products Ashampoo have never offerered me (they offer me almost everything regularly including out of date versions and name your price). I finally unsubscribed to the emails having got sick of the constant deluge of offers for versions of software earlier than the ones I actually bought!

[Curt]

Ashampoo keeps trying to sell me "Ashampoo Core Tuner" for $9.95. From what little I can glean from the internet, this type of application is snakeoil, no?

-Darwin (November 28, 2008, 11:41 AM)

- maybe and maybe not, I don't know. But beside all the auto- features, my interest got caught by these words:

You can set the “priority” in five levels to adjust the amount of processor power each program gets. You can also specify how many processor cores each program gets to use.

If these features can be combined, you would from my imagination be able to tell Windows Update not to use more than a fraction of a core, even if there are four cores. Or maybe I am getting this all wrong?

---

Core Tuner also comes with a Process Killer, a Services Manager, and a Startup Manager.
Normal price is $20

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Edited:
I feel it appropriate to remind any readers that Ashampoo programs not are cheap! They are on the contrary a little expensive! When a normal program would go from version 2.0 to 2.1, any Ashampoo program becomes version 3, and you will have to purchase it again. I very recently upgraded my Ashampoo WinOptimizer from version 4 to 5, when version 5 was brand new, and already they are offering me to pre-order version 6!!!

I should know if they are expensive or not. I have 4.985 Yiggles 

[Darwin]

I should know if they are expensive or not. I have 4.985 Yiggles

-Curt (November 28, 2008, 03:54 PM)

[off-topic] 5494 here 

Have you ever used your discount, though, Curt? It's far cheaper to wait for them to offer you a deal (like the Core Tuner one that I mentioned) as you can't actually use your Yiggles on already discounted applications and the discounts are usually greater than 60% (let alone the 40% to which you and I are entitled)[/off-topic]