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Author Topic: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006  (Read 14446 times)

Arjen

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Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« on: December 08, 2006, 04:41 AM »
This month, Find and Run Robot is featured in PCM, a large PC magazine in The Netherlands. In an article titled "Kickstart" they compare five application launchers / find utilities, and Find and Run Robot comes out as the winner!

This is what they have to say about Find and Run Robot:

Don't be misled by the oldfashioned name of this program, because it is an excellent application launcher with a lot of options, but also some confusing features. To start with the latter: the program works with scores to determine which file it has to show first after a search. For example: say you have a hundred files with the word "rabbit hole" in it. Every time you search for that word, you'll be after the same file nine out of ten times. When you open that particular file, Find and Run Robot gives it the highest score and will put it at the top of the list the next time. Without a doubt a good system, but why bother us with that...? To conclude, for real geeks it's a nice feature, and it's also possible to configure the search window to not show the scores at all.

The program is extremely speedy and very configurable. It might look a bit less polished than Launchy, but can do much more. At a glance you can see where the found files and folders are located on your hard disk. And maybe the best feature: every new file (only files, not folders) is found by Find and Run Robot instantly. There is no need to update an index. Impressive.

  + very configurable
  + manipulation of search results possible
  + fast
  + shows location of the result
  + new files are found instantly (no index)
  - no "smart search" *
  - options might be overwhelming for a new user

* By this they mean things like "fuzzy search"; as an example they give that "vsita" would give the same results as "vista".

Their conclusion at the end of the article:

Without a doubt, we choose Find and Run Robot. Especially the fact that the program finds new files instantly impresses us. A good runner-up is Launchy; it may not have as many features, but can be configured enough to be comfortable to work with.

Congratulations, mouser, on this great and well deserved recognition of Find and Run Robot!

A PDF version of the article (in Dutch) can be found here.

If I've made any spelling, grammar or translation errors above, or if you have other comments, please let me know.

nudone

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2006, 08:53 AM »
hip, hip, hooray! for mouser.

always nice to see find and run robot getting credit (and coming tops).

mitzevo

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2006, 09:00 AM »
that's very nice. credits to mouser  ;D
The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.

Darwin

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2006, 07:36 PM »
Thanks Arjen. Very interesting. While the comparison chart that is in the pdf is clear enough, it's not clear (to this non-Dutch speaker) what the author is saying about what I presume to be Vista's new searching capabilities and SearchSpy... Can you enlighten us about the reviewer's comments on those? SearchSpy looks interesting (if unfortunately named!).

Arjen

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2006, 03:03 AM »
[..] it's not clear (to this non-Dutch speaker) what the author is saying about what I presume to be Vista's new searching capabilities and SearchSpy... Can you enlighten us about the reviewer's comments on those? SearchSpy looks interesting (if unfortunately named!).
The author doesn't say very much about those two really...:

About searching in Vista: The Start menu in Vista gets a search window that allows you to search for applications fast. "Those who don't want to wait can try any of the applications discussed in this article."

About SearchSpy: SearchSpy is a clone of the search tool Spotlight on MacOS X. SearchSpy sorts the results by category. The program works with its own database, but can also use the Google Desktop index. To bad the search window can't be brought up with a hotkey.

Hope this helps.

My comments: sounds like a good idea to use one index for launcher and desktop search. Although they are two different programs that require a different user interface, they can use the same underlying data. I'm using Find and Run Robot for the first, Copernic Desktop Search for the second.

Darwin

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2006, 08:15 AM »
Thanks Arjen! I went so far as to visit the SpySearcher page but didn't download and install. No doubt I will experience Vista's search capabilities first hand in the coming months as new machines with it pre-installed start appearing in stores and in people's homes...

Gothi[c]

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2006, 08:24 AM »
!!

It made me very happy to see that far (and so donationcoder) is getting some press!!
Congratulations, mouser.
Thank you for posting this, Arjen!

mouser

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2006, 09:20 AM »
This article is what partially inspired me to finally do some marathon work on Find+Run Robot (FARR) v2.  I should be releasing this publicly next week, so get in your requests now!

Tekzel

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Re: Find and Run Robot featured in Dutch magazine PCM, Dec. 2006
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2006, 11:29 AM »
You know, that article where they commented on the name brought back my own issues with the name of FARR.  Perhaps it is time to take it to the next level and give it a nice catchy name for version 2.0?