Cprnc Smrzr

November 19, 2006 2:15 PM

Does anyone use Copernic Summarizer?

I am curious to know if people use it as a genuine business/ professional tool, or if it's just something you run on those long AskMe's devoid of punctuation.

posted by forallmankind to computers & internet (11 comments total)

From my experiences with Copernic's search stuff, I'd say they tend to be long on promises and short on delivery. Wouldn't surprise me if their summarizer sucked too.
posted by reklaw at 2:53 PM on November 19, 2006

reklaw says "From my experiences with Copernic's search stuff, I'd say they tend to be long on promises and short on delivery. Wouldn't surprise me if their summarizer sucked too.

Wow, that's really insightful! I would have taken it seriously too, except for the fact that Copernic has one of the best, if not THE best, Desktop Search software in the market right now...
posted by tuxster at 3:08 PM on November 19, 2006

ditto on their search product.
posted by donp17 at 3:19 PM on November 19, 2006

Hey, OS X has something like this built right in. It contracted this recent post down to

Now the proprietor insists this is not true and told me if I can prove it I can drink free Guinness in his pub for the rest of my life.

However that was in Maximum Summarization Mode. Set to a bit mode mellow level of information removal you get.

For years I have heard from various sources that certain pubs in the united states get their Guinness airlifted in from Ireland (or the U.K.).... Now the proprietor insists this is not true and told me if I can prove it I can drink free Guinness in his pub for the rest of my life.

basically you need really a rather long piece of text to get any decent use out of these things. Even 1-2 paragraphs isn't enough for it to actually cut things down and still remain legible.
posted by public at 3:26 PM on November 19, 2006

Just in case anyone was wondering where this mostly useless/unused feature of OS X lived
posted by public at 3:30 PM on November 19, 2006

Public: and this function can be found where?
posted by spaceman_spiff at 3:35 PM on November 19, 2006

To get a summary of a document [random bit of text you selected], select the text and choose Services from the application's menu, then choose Summarize.
posted by public at 3:44 PM on November 19, 2006

does anyone actually have an answer for the question?
posted by forallmankind at 4:00 PM on November 19, 2006

Copernic Desktop Search produced odd "delayed write failures" for me in Windows, which I suffered for weeks before uninstalling it. Be careful; these errors were alarming and froze my computer.
posted by shivohum at 4:55 PM on November 19, 2006

ask a stupid question... :-(
posted by forallmankind at 7:31 PM on November 19, 2006

forallmankind: Have you tried the free trial from Copernic?

At the risk of adding to the stupid commetary, this article by Al Gore's daughter detailing her experiments with Microsoft Word's auto-summarize feature is quite entertaining.
posted by lukemeister at 8:51 AM on November 20, 2006