Desktop Search ?

September 29, 2005 10:04 AM

Desktop Search for Windows XP Pro - Which one to use, now that they have all been out for a while?

I am looking for the fastest indexer, which I can leave on all the time while consuming the least resources. NB 14 days later and Google still hasn't completed indexing my 55 GB hard drive (or it has and has left out many files/emails)

posted by Voyageman to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

That doesn't seem right. Google indexed my 40gb drive overnight. I changed over to MSN though because Google didn't seem to be able to handle my moving a message to a new folder in Outlook. When I did, it would still turn up in Google Desktop search result but it was unable to locate or open the file. MSN seems a bit better on this front.
posted by gfrobe at 11:35 AM on September 29, 2005

I am currently using Copernic on my work computer. I was originally using Google Desktop 2.0, but it really brought my creaky 800mhz PC to its knees. Copernic runs a lot faster and seems to index all my files just fine.

Copernic doesn't index documents in zip files or some other fancy stuff, but it does catch my Outlook emails and contacts, and it does a great job indexing the text of PDF files.
posted by selfnoise at 1:03 PM on September 29, 2005

I second copernic, it seems to do a good job, and it handles indexing across network drives much better too.
posted by Iax at 1:48 PM on September 29, 2005

Google doesn't index my Thunderbird mail well either (it doesn't seem to detect that the junk mail filter has deleted an email, thus leaving the display filled with offers for "CH43P V1Agr4!!!!1")

But it indexed both my 40Gb drives in a few hours, and the WebClips panel is a useful 'always-on' front-end to a full blown rss reader.
posted by ThePants at 2:07 PM on September 29, 2005

I use MSN Search on a number of machines (don't laugh) and get admirably fast and comprehensive results...indexing initially is pretty fast, then virtually transparent.

Its come a long way since initial incarnations.
posted by mattr at 4:56 PM on September 29, 2005