Avafind mini review

[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-les...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....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/re...enter/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

[Change]

I love AvaFind because of its simplicity and extremely fast startup time (to get to the screen and search). I just tried X1 but find it too complicated and slow.. I'd rather use Copernic instead of X1. I use Copernic for thorough finding and searching through email and documents, and AvaFind for quick file searches.

About the problems the previous poster mentioned:
- I never noticed AvaFind making my PC slow or using too many resources. Even when it's creating its cache, my PC is not slow. I very rarely had to refresh the cache, but when I did, it was done within 15 minutes (500GB+) and the computer remained responsive.
- I've only experienced AvaFind crashes on startup when Windows crashed or was closed down improperly before. This is an experience from several PC's.
- Fair point about the mount points, that is a shame.

Too bad this program is not being developed actively anymore. I love it and it would be nice if it would be improved.

[Darwin]

I love X1 but it doesn't play nice with Outlook 2003 on my machine and I experienced a lot of errors running it. I also found that it was sporadically S-L-O-O-O-O-O-O-W (ie it was slow at some times and pretty snappy at others - never could find a common thread). However, I've switched to Copernic 2 and while it is more stable, find it like molasses as well. I *think* I might give FileHand another go (it was the first indexer that i tried, about 7 years ago). It's important to me that the contents of files and my e-mails be indexed in addition to file and folder names, which is what I gather Avafind does?

[Change]

AvaFind does not index the contents of files and does not index emails either. It's purely to find files fast (much faster than the bigger search programs, especially if you include startup time of the search/results screen) and the ability to perform explorer tasks on the files.

[Darwin]

Thanks Change - that last sentence in my post should read: "...which I gather Avafind does not do" - I rewrote the message extensively and missed revising that.

[edbro]

However, I've switched to Copernic 2 and while it is more stable, find it like molasses as well.

-Darwin (March 11, 2007, 06:57 PM)

Slow at what? Searching or indexing? I don't notice much system degradation at all with Copernic. I'm running it on an older (slow) laptop.

What I like about Copernic is that it doesn't need to open a browser window to display the results, unlike Google's Desktop Search.

[Darwin]

"Slow at what?" - Opening the GUI (I select it from the system tray rather than using the taskbar toolbar) AND returning search results. When X1/YDS were working properly, the results returned were instantaneous. I have Copernic set to index my Outlook .pst file (200MB) and My Documents folder (this is in excess of 25GB). I'll try reducing the My Documents folders to those that I care about (there are lots of folders that are irrelevant, such as PSP 9, X, and X1 file folders) and see if it makes a difference.

While we're on the subject, though, indexing took more than 24 hours! Again, this may be due to the size of My Documents... However, I don't believe that this is particularly large in the context of modern harddrives that are approaching a terabyte in size. My entire harddrive is 80GB split into two partitions - one for Windows/programs and the other for My Documents.

[MerleOne]

I also use X1: I have 3 pst files over 1GB each and it works fine.  The only drawback is that is uses a lot of ram and virtual memory.  Copernic interface was nicer IMO, but the engine used to be really buggy and missed a lot of e-mails.  I have not tried Copernic V2. 

Microsoft has now launched several months ago its own Desktop search.  Anyone did try it ?

[Babis]

@surftwo: x1 is for files' content search and could be used as an addition to Avafind, but for files/folders searching/launching cannot be compared to avafind/locate

@svv1999:
1) there is not need to refresh the cache unless you have exited the program for a reason. Also a manual refresh doesn't delay the PC at all, in my PC it takes about a minute with 20% CPU.
2) Never experienced any crashing 3 years of using it and also Avafind never missed indexing a single file in 3 years
3) Mounted partitions, agree.

@edbro: CDS (copernic desktop search) indexer slows down occasionally the PC and lacks keyboard shortcuts. Definitely not recommended to be used solely to launch files/programs.

@MerleOne: I tried MS desktop search. It is not as customizable as CDS but it seems more stable and lighter. It could be used to launch files/programs.

Personally I am using Avafind in combination with DTSearch Desktop (for content searching) and Directory Opus.

[doe5551212]

Have any of you tried FILE LOCATOR PRO or the freeware version AGENT RANSACK? http://www.mythicsof....com/filelocatorpro/ and something really simple...SNOWBIRD5...http://www.geocities...asablanca2000in/msp/ Have used FILE LOCATOR PRO now for about three years...and, in my humble opinion, excellent. Before that I used AVA FIND and tried to contact to see when an update might be done...never received a reply after several emails to them. When working on other people's computers I always recommend AGENT RANSACK since it is free and does a great job...SNOWBIRD is another great no install program...

[Darwin]

I have a copy of File Locator Pro but need something that will look inside my pst. AFAIK, FLP will not do this, hence my search for something that will. I know that LookOut will do the job, but I am hoping to avoid adding anymore to Outlook 2003's bloat...

[Kevin Black]

Nice program! However, have anyone here tried Instant File Find  http://www.popusoft.com  ??  It's very similar to AvaFind (purely file search tool ) . However, the search toolbar in Instant File Find can be customized. And files can be searched  by size and date. The interface is better than avafind also . Both are excellent software except there's no update for avafind for many years.

[nosh]

I'm glad I discovered this mini review via another thread - thanks, Babis!
Ava Find is indeed very helpful - similar (realtime file indexing) to FileTracer which also hasn't seen any development for a while.

A quick comparison between the two:

• Ava Find (AF) has live search - a big plus!
• AF has the scout box (new + changed files), FileTracer (FT) lets you view the changes in realtime in a separate window (think Filemon)
• AF has very customizable folder blocking (a different set of folders can be blocked for different panes) but it's a royal pain in the neck to set up, FT lets you block off certain folders for everything but setting this up is done in a much more straightforward way.
• AF's video, music, etc buttons don't act as filters for the current search but show a complete list of those file types, FT lets you do result filtering which is much more useful.
• AF's Mypicks and Scoutbox panes are nice but I wish there was an option to clear these boxes automatically.
• The file result layout in AF is superior (in details view).

Overall AF is superior in a few ways, just wish a couple of its obvious drawbacks weren't around.
 
Edit: Just tried Instant File Find, it's very similar to AF but without the scoutbox and recently run files list. The toolbar is customizable and attractive but the buttons do the same thing as AF's counterparts (ie: list all files in that category (music, video,...) rather than filter out those file types based on the search carried out. It must be mentioned that Instant File Find's indexing was the fastest of the lot.