Quote from: Lashiec on June 03, 2008, 11:01 PM

Wait, are you using three desktop search engines? Are you storing the indexes in a server?

My name is Mike and I am a software addict...

I'm running all three on a notebook with a 120GB harddrive... The indices combined total about 3GB - the largest being Archivarius at about 2GB with dtSearch weighing in at 580MB and X1 at 472MB... I still have about 20 GB free so am not worried. I *know* that I *should* settle on one (or at most two!) and uninstall what I'm not using, but then what would I do about the 15 file managers that I have installed, the multiple file/folder compparators, and the numerous reg-ex/text search and replace apps that I have installed. Then there are the office suites and the note takers/web archivers. Nope. Too many decisions 

HI MIKE! (I think that's the way we're supposed to start.)

Take heart. Admitting your addiction IS the first step. On the other hand, until you eliminate it, ENJOY YOUR ADDICTION!

As normalizing such matters typically has a consoling effect, take heart as well in the fact that given this site's membership, it could as well have been called "Software Anonymous" or any of the myriad other titles one might have imagine given our MUTUAL addiction.

Firmly addicted,
Ken

I had a quick search of the topic but couldn't find it:

FindOnClick from 2BrightSparks, (the guys that brought you SyncBack).

After registering SyncBack using a recent DC discount, I happened to win a license for OnClick Utilities by filling in the survey - EXCELLENT!!  Two utils for the discounted price of one - best discount I ever got!

I used to use Locate32 and Index Your Files, the problem with both of these is they require you to index the drives - a pointless exercise AFAIAC.  If I'm searching for something, I want the result now not in a few minutes time.

Anyway, they're gone now, replaced by FindOnClick which seems ridiculously fast to me.

eg.

To search S: for *.jpg, (result 1362):
DOpus        17s
FindOnClick  0.81s

To search D: for *.jpg, (result 29627):
DOpus        78s
FindOnClick  7s

For the rare occasions I need to search for that elusive file I'll be using FindOnClick.

PS. Thank you DC for the discount 

PS Ken - we need to start a support group... Hang on, this IS the support group 

FindOnClick really is impressively fast.

My problems with the program were: 1) that it is not "integrated" with Explorer other than in the context menu. In most cases my search via GTSearch or QT will have ended before FindOnClick even have begun to search, because these apps are genuinely INTEGRATED. This is of course only a concern if the user already is inside Explorer.  2) FindOnClick can set a shortcut to the search you have performed. Nice. But a) you will have to name the link yourself if you are going to have more than one of the kind, and b) it is not a link to the result of the search but to a new search for the same criteria, (some non-sense deleted). 3) It is not FindOnClick but FindOnDoubleclick 4) It is $30  Edited: seems to be $30 including: EncryptOnClick + DeleteOnClick + UndeleteOnClick + HashOnClick + PatchOnClick + ScrambleOnClick  which all seems very cheap (read: "cheap" as in a fine deal, not as in cheap crap), but I don't think I want any of them.

But other than this it really is both fast and 'nice'.

Edited:

5) During un-install I was asked this question I really hate to get:
>Remove shared file?<   

[attachthumb=#]

EvenMoreEdited:

Also, the shortcut in Quick Launch was left behind. 

I'm running all three on a notebook with a 120GB harddrive... The indices combined total about 3GB - the largest being Archivarius at about 2GB with dtSearch weighing in at 580MB and X1 at 472MB... I still have about 20 GB free so am not worried.

Oh, I thought the indexes were FAR bigger.

Scanfs has just been updated as well. Would you guys mind give a try and compare it to others? I use it here and I am happy but I do not have searchgt etc. I do not have any affiliation just a happy user

Btw it is free!

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13567.0

http://www.saleensoftware.com/ScanFS.aspx

sorry to hear that. I have never had any issues installing it. I use it on both xp64bit and 32bit.

Quote from: rjbull on June 05, 2008, 08:24 AM

Do your 15 licenses for file managers include XYplorer?  And if so, how do you rate its search functions against those, given that it's a file manager built on a file-finder, rather than the other way round?

I'm feeling quite embarrassed now (rather than being simply embarrassed)...

But c'est la vie! Yes, I have a lifetime licence for XYPlorer and love it. It's search feature is very fine, but I would rate it between SearchGT and FileLocator Pro based on speed AND based on feature set

I'll take it that here we're primarily talking features as an information finder, rather than a plain file finder or file manager.

- the differences would be that if speed were determining the criteria, SearchGT would win, whereas on feature set FL Pro would win.

I seem to remember DonL saying that SearchGT was particularly fast at "first time" searches, but that once the Windows cache had been loaded, there wasn't much in it.

However, if you're taking BOTH into account, XYPlorer heads the list! It's quicker than FL Pro and DOES do file content searching. However, I've never really been able to get it to work - all the hits that I get contain my search term in their titles and I KNOW that there are many thousands of files that contain the search term in their content but not in their titles. Anyway, just did such a regular "title" search and it took 79 seconds on 80 GB of data (114,000 files in 9000 folders). Content searches take A LONG TIME. In fact, FL Pro handles this kind of search much more quickly.

Here, I suppose, it's really a case of what's the main focus of a particular application.  I found content search less good in XYplorer than I'm used to.  You can use its Ctrl-Q Quick View feature on the hits, but it's not so obvious where the hits are in the file.  If you do a contents search with Total Commander and ask it to view the files it's found, you can just press F3 and it will do a "find again" search on the text you originally asked it to search for.  That's a nice touch, and one I didn't immediately see in XYplorer (somebody correct me if I'm wrong).  Wish list - an option to colourise the hit terms...  Also, I find TC more keyboard-friendly than XYplorer, but I find myself using the latter more for unindexed searches of the network. 

I don't have FL Pro, in part because I briefly looked at Agent Ransack and found it wouldn't work properly on the computer I use at work owing to restrictions in force at the time.  Maybe I should take another look.  BareGrepPro is wonderful for grep with or without regexp searches and shows you the text in a window, but I would often prefer Boolean searching.  The only (Windows) program that has Boolean searching that I have at present is WanyWord (freeware), but I don't much like the syntax and I want better options for proximity searching, like (at least) that terms should be within one to "n" lines of each other.  Asking they should be within so many words of each other would doubtless slow things down too much for unindexed searches.

I'll take it that here we're primarily talking features as an information finder, rather than a plain file finder or file manager.

Yes - I was comparing XYPlorer as a search tool in the above post. Thanks for pointing out Total Commander's capabilities as a content search tool - I haven't played with its search feature much and had no idea 

The main problem I have with XYPlorer's content search feature is that it is not only slow, but also SO slow that I tend to give up on it (and it chews up a lot of resources as well). I should play with it on a much more restricted set of files (ie not on my entire E: drive - 80+ GB, as I usually do...). You're correct about the first time speed advantage enjoyed by SearchGT being somewhat neutralized after a second and subsequent runs. There was an exchange, that I particiaptated in, about this when SearchGT first came to DC's general attention and this behaviour was explored a bit.

FL Pro is very nice, but BareGrep Pro is much faster... As you might imagine, I have licences for both 

Why all the red faced smilies of late? Well... I have licences for a lot of software but have next to no expertise with any of them - sort of a modified Jack of all trades, master of none... How would that go? Darwin of all apps, master of none 

EDIT: fixed quote

The main problem I have with XYPlorer's content search feature is that it is not only slow, but also SO slow that I tend to give up on it (and it chews up a lot of resources as well).

You should bring that to DonL's attention, as it's a serious criticism of XYplorer.

I should play with it on a much more restricted set of files (ie not on my entire E: drive - 80+ GB, as I usually do...).

Even BareGrepPro takes a while on 100,000 files, if you must start from the root with *.* 

FL Pro is very nice, but BareGrep Pro is much faster

BareGrepPro is so fast that it's usually no hardship to run it several times, but sometimes I'd accept a speed penalty for the convenience of Boolean searching on text data, which isn't always easy to "grep."

... As you might imagine, I have licences for both 

Why all the red faced smilies of late? Well... I have licences for a lot of software but have next to no expertise with any of them - sort of a modified Jack of all trades, master of none...  How would that go? Darwin of all apps, master of none 

As a good Darwinian, no doubt you're evolving towards mastery? 

Now, about that twelve-step program... 

I have a confession to make. I have a license for both Xplorer2 and XYPlorer and I have both of them installed on my laptop. This has resulted in me being less efficient because I keep confusing the two and don't learn the shortcuts etc.

Can somebody smarter than me sum up what differentiates the two. Preferably I would like to hear something like, XYPlorer is focused on making things easier and Xplorer2 is focused on getting every feature possible at your command. Or something like that.

Do you folks suggest I use one for a few months and then the other, or should I put one on my laptop and one on my desktop and use them both. I am thinking the former, but not sure which to use first. 

I can't do much better than Lashiec in enumerating the differences between XYPlorer and Xplorer2... Biggest difference (for now?) is that XYPlorer is designed around having a single viewing pane and extensive tab support whereas XPlorer2 is designed around a dual-pane approach. Actually, scratch that. This is the most OBVIOUS difference when opening up and playing with both for a couple of minutes. Dig deeper and the differences Lashiec mentinons become more apparent.

Quote from: 4wd on June 06, 2008, 03:12 AM

EDIT: Please note I run an optimised version of XP -

- you don't seem to have the same conception of the word "optimized" as I have.

That's because I use the original english spelling not the butchered, "americanized" version of the english language 

From the Free Dictionary:

Verb 1. optimise - make optimal; get the most out of; use best; "optimise your resources"

Note: I changed the spelling in the above to correct it

I'm getting the "most" and "best" out of my system by removing those parts of it which are not required for my normal day-to-day use of it.  eg. IE is not "required", OE is not "required", the "Indexing Service" is not required, ad-infinitum.

Hence the reason for the post-edit on my message.

Programs that run perfectly well on other machines will not run on yours, is not quite telling it is 'optimized'.

Programs are always highly dependent on the environment in which they are installed.  A program that works on one persons system could fail on anothers simply because there's another program installed which interacts in a conflicting manner.

Over the time I've run various "optimised" versions of XP, (over two years), I think I've come across only two programs which didn't work as they normally would - ScanFS is the second.  And there are always alternatives.

We do not all have the same meaning on this or that, but in general I would say that people who are buying a limousine are not expected to see how much they can remove from the car, are they. If they want the vehicle to move faster they don't usually rip off and throw out the seats, but are more tending to tune up the engine...

Car analogies are notoriously inaccurate but since you mention the one above I would classify my removing the useless, (to me), parts of XP as "tending to tune up the engine..."

My system works perfectly fine with all I've removed, indeed it works better than a stock install AFAIAC.  It is by no means optimised as far as I could take it, as I still have things like "IE core" installed for those programs that seem to think they need it.

The meaning of "optimise" is the same in every language, it is only the degree of optimisation which differs from person to person.

And, quite frankly, I would be hard pressed to think of anyone who could honestly say that Microsoft's products could not do with some really good optimisation.

EDIT: While I think of it, since you're the one who brought up these car analogies  :

but in general I would say that people who are buying a limousine are not expected to see how much they can remove from the car, are they.

You obviously don't watch Top Gear.  They bought a XJ-S Jaguar and removed everything unnecessary to it's primary operation, (which is basically getting the passengers from one point to another), to see how much faster it would go.  Guess what?  It went faster.

Guess what?  My "optimised" XP is more responsive and smoother in operation than in it's original "non-optimised" form.