Information Addicts

Trying to find any files in Windows XP can sometimes be a bit of a fruitless exercise to say the least, and if you have a large hard drive, it can seem to take forever. Microsoft improved the search facility in Windows Vista, but it still seems to be lacking in any great functionality.
Jumping on the band wagon many companies realized this, and developed their own desktop search applications, claiming to be better than the Windows versions, but a lot of them are a waste of hard drive space.
There was one program however that caught my eye, it was receiving very good reviews and ratings in computer magazines, and on the internet, that application is called Copernic Desktop search from a company called Copernic Inc. I decided to give it a try and I can tell you that this application is very impressive because it has a vast array of features compared to the Windows offering, and it gets the results you want fast.

Copernic is only 5.43MB in size and is very easy to install.
Once installed, Copernic creates an index of all your files on the hard drive.
You can watch it while it works by clicking on Copernic in the Notification area, to open it select the Tools menu > Indexing Status and you will be able to see the files that are being indexed.
Not only does Copernic index them for you, but it will also put them under category headings of e-mails, files, music, pictures, videos, contacts, favorites, and history.

Depending on how large the hard drive is and the number of files on it, indexing can take a few hours or longer as it will only index when the pc is not doing anything.
I left my pc on over night as I have got 2 large hard drives installed.
This only happens once, and after that Copernic will only index new files when they are created, as I stated earlier you also have the option to add your favorite web pages and emails from Outlook/Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Eudora which is a great idea if you want to find any of your old emails ultra fast.
If you are using a laptop you have the option to suspend the indexing process when it runs on battery power.

In use, the main program screen is split into categories (shown below) down the side and along the top, and there are two results windows. The very bottom right window shows a preview of the actual file contents. So if it is an email Copernic desktop search will display the email message.

Searching any file is a simple affair, type the word in the search box, tick a category, so for instance if you are looking for some music, click on the music category, click on the arrow or press the Enter key and you will be amazed at just how fast your result comes up.
If you are looking for a picture, type the name of the picture in the search box, select the picture category, then click on the arrow icon or press the Enter key, not only will Copernic find the picture it will also display it. You can also refine your search by using the options on the left hand side.

Copernic has many many features but best of all it is free.
Take a look below:

• Quickly find and display recent pictures (or any file for that matter) that you have viewed in the last 30 days or you can refine the search to any number of days.
• Instantly find Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, Word Perfect, text, ZIP files.
• Search for over 150 other types of files like, MP3, JPG, WAV, MPEG.
• Instantly preview filtered matching results.
• Quickly find search keywords: auto-scroll to first occurrence and highlighted keywords.
• Search the Web or your computer from the same lightweight, intuitive interface.
• Stay informed with RSS feeds delivered straight to your ticker (Internet Explorer browser only).
• Specify additional file types to index.
• Benefit from automatic, unnoticed real-time indexing of new/updated files and emails.

Overall this is a great application and definitely worth trying. If you don’t like the program you can always remove it.

You can download Copernic desktop search from here.

Popularity: 11% [?]

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 8:08 am and is filed under PC Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.