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I spy...with my little eye...on my hard drive...

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Armando:
My set up is similar to Darwin and Tranglos.

- Everything/farr (plugin) for quick filename searching.

- Windows Search/farr (plugin) for Outlook stuff (contacts, emails, etc.)

- Archivarius for file content. I found that Archivarius to be the most reliable of the bunch (Google Desktop Search included). Plus it's cheap... But development is on the slow side (only thing that happened in the last 4 years : more file types were added to the indexing engine capabilities -- it's a good thing, but a few GUI improvement here and there would also be good... Not to mention better Outlook indexing.)

If you read around DC, you'll see that I did extensive testing (Darwin and others did too) a few years ago. One thing I found out is that no other indexer than Archivarius could reliably index ALL pages of huge documents (1000s of pages) + index comments in Word documents and pdf files, which can be very important/useful if you're a researcher.

- Archivarius for filename search on network/removable disks... However, rarely used here.

Armando:
Sorry, couldn't help it.

SpoilerMy test for huge documents has always been this weird book called Spinbitz. What a book. Never read it, but the title is fantastic.  ;D

superboyac:
i agree with those here using the combination-software setup.  It's funny, the DC community here has really fallen in love with Everything and Locate32.  I'm one of them...and I think we know what we're talking about here.   :Thmbsup:

Anyway, I've been around and around on the desktop search issues over the years.  And you guys know how unreasonably picky I am.

Windows Desktop Search:
I used this at work for a while because we use Outlook and it keeps nagging you for installing it if you don't turn it off.  Anyway, it's decent, but nothing spectacular.  Not the most flexible application in the world.  I never had a real problem with it other than I was just not all that impressed.

Google Desktop:
I've only used this a couple of times.  Again, not terribly impressed by it.  I also don't like personally using too many google software unless they are really great (gmail, sketchup, earth) because google is too big for my comfort.  I don't necessarily think google is a bad guy, I actually have no reason to think that yet, but their size just makes me want to avoid them if I can help it.  Anyway, I've never really given GDS a fair shot, but from what I saw...meh.

DTsearch:
Awesome!!  Love it.  Expensive.  It's a little too intense for casual use.  But if you want features, power, or just to get it to work exactly the way you want it to, this is the one.

Archivarius:
This is the best bang for the buck.  For most users I would recommend this one.  It's fantastic, it's lightweight, it can probably read more file types than anything out there.  It's relatively cheap, but not free like the others.  Still, they deserve a little money for how nice it is.  I rely on this one for my personal business.  The only obvious downside to it is that it shows all document contents, including emails, in plain text, so the previews can be a little frustrating to read (like html emails).  But I got used to it pretty quickly.  What I really like about it is how fast and responsive it is.  WDS and GDS are very sluggish compared to it.  The Archivarius guys are good guys, I would say our community here would welcome them with wide open arms.


Ian, I didn't realize GDS was killed.  That's very interesting.  It's interesting that the company that is THE search company discontinued its personal search tool.  Not a good feeling for me.  If anybody can make a dynamite personal search tool, it's Google.  They have all the right algorithms and resources.  So killing off that product is a little suspicious.  They probably just don't want anything to do with desktop tools if they can help it.  They want to go all cloud.  I hope they never get rid of their pop3 email feature, or google earth, or sketchup as desktop tools.

Armando:
DTsearch:
Awesome!!  Love it.  Expensive.  It's a little too intense for casual use.  But if you want features, power, or just to get it to work exactly the way you want it to, this is the one.
-superboyac (February 18, 2012, 11:54 PM)
--- End quote ---

In 2008, DTSearch didn't index MS Word or pdf comments (see my post above and that). But Archivarius does.
So, IMO, in terms of reliability, Archivarius wins the content indexing contest... What good is a content indexer if it misses some of it ?

superboyac:
DTsearch:
Awesome!!  Love it.  Expensive.  It's a little too intense for casual use.  But if you want features, power, or just to get it to work exactly the way you want it to, this is the one.
-superboyac (February 18, 2012, 11:54 PM)
--- End quote ---

In 2008, DTSearch didn't index MS Word or pdf comments (see my post above and that). But Archivarius does.
So, IMO, in terms of reliability, Archivarius wins the content indexing contest... What good is a content indexer if it misses some of it ?
-Armando (February 19, 2012, 12:40 AM)
--- End quote ---
Very true.  I don't really recommend DTSearch for most people at all.  The only time I came around to DT was when I was trying to do a very particular search...like fancy regex type of issues.  It was more for the excercise of it than anything else.  But Archivarius, I use that every single day.

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