SillyDog701

[Antony]

The built-in Windows search engine is not good enough, Google and Yahoo! are coming to rescue you.

Yahoo! Desktop Search seems to me is similar to Google's Google Desktop, both are now in beta, and both require Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP3+.

> Google Desktop
> Yahoo! Desktop Search

Why do we need a more powerful method to search files in our own computers? Searching the web is getting easier but finding a file from our own computers is getting harder and harder.

Mac OS X first provided a solution in 10.3 Finder, together with user-centric window layout, making the Finder really finds things easier than any other built-in search engine in competitive operating systems.

Finder's powerful search technology was first developed for iTunes (software and iTunes Music Store). Apple does not stop there, the upcoming Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' will surprise Windows and Linux users(*) again.

(*) Except those who hate Mac simply because they can't afford a Mac, and arrogant people.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12

[Marcus]

(*) Except those who hate Mac simply because they can't afford a Mac, and arrogant people.

...and people who use specialised software on a daily basis that only works on Windows...

I like the idea of improving searching on a cmoputer but only if I can be sure that personal data is safe. Although I'm sure Yahoo and Google would not pry (although I haven't checked this) I feel Beta versions of the software could have the problem of Malware authors manipulating the system. Personally I'll wait until it's more tried and tested.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0 (ax)

[profman]

I have Google Desktop installed on my home Windows XP system. It seems quite nice, although its mail indexing is limited to Outlook products. It can search both your own computer and the Internet. It does, if you let it, report some statistical info back to Google. I, so far, trust Google, so I am letting it report back the statistics. Google Desktop is only for Windows XP and Windows 2000 (Service Pack 3 or above), and requires IE 5, although it does run from my Mozilla 1.7.5. There is no Mac version yet.

I installed Copernic Desktop Search on my Windows 98 machine and on my office Windows XP Pro system. The office system would not accept Google (perhaps due to the university network or the proxy server). Copernic is a nice search function with more options than Google and seems not to phone home at all. I use it only for local searches although it does have options for internet search which I do not use. It does not search Mozilla Mail although it may index bookmarks and history. No Mac version here either.

Both of the above search engines take quite a while to establish an initial index of your hard drive. I have not yet tried Yahoo search.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

[Andrew T.]

Since I do not use Windows 2000 or Windows XP (at least, on any computer of my own), I have not had the opportunity to try these search tools or see what they are like.

What are the advantages to using these tools over just the simple "Find" tool already present in Windows?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

[Antony]

(*) Except those who hate Mac simply because they can't afford a Mac, and arrogant people.

...and people who use specialised software on a daily basis that only works on Windows...

Well, there are a huge number of people who refuse to accept something not available in their platform is more powerful and easier to use, instead they bash. Why? Jealousy.

What are the advantages to using these tools over just the simple "Find" tool already present in Windows?

The built-in search (find) function in Windows can't find the files we want? Sometimes, people can't remember the filename, and not many people bother to put the index terms and description for their Word documents.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12

[Al]

(*) Except those who hate Mac simply because they can't afford a Mac, and arrogant people.

...and people who use specialised software on a daily basis that only works on Windows...

I like the idea of improving searching on a cmoputer but only if I can be sure that personal data is safe. Although I'm sure Yahoo and Google would not pry (although I haven't checked this) I feel Beta versions of the software could have the problem of Malware authors manipulating the system. Personally I'll wait until it's more tried and tested.

Yahoo! and Google software do not have malware, beta's are unstable and could crash a lot. Like Chimera 0.6 on OS X, it didn't even run on the OS X computer at school

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

[Marcus]

Well, there are a huge number of people who refuse to accept something not available in their platform is more powerful and easier to use, instead they bash. Why? Jealousy.

No, lack of availability. I have no interest in buying a system where the software that I need to use is not available and that the software is too specialised (written by universities for a specific purpose) to find equivilant versions. If it was a more open product then I would consider it but I have thousands of pounds worth of Windows software built up over the years so it is a case of upgrading would be outrageously expensive. I've yet to hear an argument justifying why I should do that other than the 'bells and whistles' being demonstrated.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0 (ax)

[profman]

Copernic Desktop search will run on Windows 98 and ME. Its system requirements are listed as:

Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
For real-time file monitoring: Windows XP/2000/NT
To index email/contacts: Outlook Express 5.x/6.x, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, Windows Address Book

Both Copernic and Google Desktop have, so far, been stable on my systems. Copernic is listed as version 1.2, not a beta product.

I find Copernic to be a valuable tool on my office desktop system. It finds files that I have scattered all over the hard drive. I've never been happy with the built-in Windows search.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217