back to article How are we going to search our hard disks now?

Regular readers will know my occasional whinges about the sad state of the market for email clients – these generate hundreds of emails and comments. But there is another product category that is looking decidedly shabby these days. It is one which every so often becomes fashionable for a few weeks, and then goes on to suffer …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Linux or mac os X

    Just use locate to narrow down a list of files in seconds and grep to look inside them. Okay it's not perfect with binary files but it beats anything I've ever found on windows, and the wife can never find things using explorer, even with obvious names like C.V.

    1. JC_

      Another Reason to Upgrade

      To 7 or Vista. The search in XP did indeed suck, but isn't half-bad in Vista/7.

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
        FAIL

        Windows search

        However, it still only indexes (or searches in) files that it thinks that you should look in.

        If you are looking for a netlist (or text schematic) that contains certain terms, it won't find it. Even if you restrict the file extension to the ones you want, it just says none, without even telling you that it didn't look because it doesn't like .net or .asc files! Of course if you have permissions to roger the registry, you can change a setting, but then that's more work than grep!

        1. ridley
          FAIL

          Windows 7 Search?

          Now it is quite likely I am doing something extremely idiotic but I have had loads of frustration with Windows 7 search not finding things I know are there. In frustration I even had it search on a term in some filenames that I could see were there in the same folder, nope didnt find a thing.

          Bring back XP search

        2. gzuckier

          However, it still only indexes (or searches in) files that it thinks that you should look in.

          indeed. the old trick of finding the origin of random error junk by searching the program files to find which one contained the mystery text is long gone, for instance.

      2. Calum Morrison
        Thumb Down

        I thought that too...

        Then tried searching for file types; it can't. I searched an indexed location on my PC the other day (using the more-or-less-undocumented-but-none-the-less-official method: type=) for an ISO and it flat out refused to find it. Even XP could do that...

        The future is rubbish.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          type= Isn't the Correct Syntax

          You should use Type:<type>

          If you start a search from a Library then you will be offered Type: and Kind: with appropriate drop down lists for selection. It may take a while for the drop down to populate for Type: but you don't have to wait, you can type an extension.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Linux

      Re: Linux or ...

      restricting it just to Linux, catfish is a front end to locate or find so no text foo is required. IMHO more useful than strigi because it doesn't have to chomp away in the background, though as a result is slower to display results.

    3. teknopaul

      agreed

      locate + grep are essential I never search with anything else. both available for Windows too . invent a file extension for you personal stuff and if you do have to scan file contents you can feed grep a shortlist. if you have to search you whole drive to find something you should sort out your bad habit of sticking stuff in silly places!

    4. Aaron Em

      Yeah, that's an answer

      Why don't we just sit you down at my desk for a day, and you can explain it to all the blue-haired old ladies who currently ask me for help finding files.

  2. Joe Harrison

    Amen

    I am going to be a bit stuck without Google Desktop. At the moment I can hit the CTRL key twice to bring up a lightning fast desktop search box which makes equivalent searches via our "official" HTML form seem childlike in comparison.

    I'll keep it going as long as I can but agree with Andrew there is realistically nothing to use instead :(

  3. jake Silver badge

    Take a course ...

    ... learn to become a librarian.

    Seriously. Your computer is a modern day personal library. If you can figure out how the stacks at Stanford or Berkeley work, your personal storage should be an open book. ::ahem::

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Take a course

      Sounds like overkill to me. The most obvious difference between your computer and a library is that you didn't put everything into the library whereas presumably you did put everything into your computer.

      Perhaps that's being naive. If so, could someone please explain what is on your computer, who put it there, what makes you do sure it is there and why (despite that) it is difficult for you to find it.

      I'm sure there *are* reasonable answers to those questions that lead us down the path to "you need a private google", but there are also many answers that deserve the response "don't be so careless". I think we need to clarify requirements before we can have a reasonable discussion about procurement.

      1. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Librarians...

        Of course a librarian "put everything into the library". That is what they do. The key difference between you and a librarian is that they have a system. Not only do they have a system but it's a standardized system that any other librarian or even a civilian can get a handle on.

        "Desktop Search" is simply a response to people in general refusing to be organized or refusing to understand what technology can do.

        It also leads to silliness where people dump their iPhoto libraries to CD because they became too large to manage (in iPhoto).

      2. jake Silver badge

        My point, Ken Hagan, is "learn to file properly".

        It ain't exactly rocket science.

        (Simplistic Librarian course is only 1 Uni unit ... but I recommend the 4 unit version. It'll do you a world of good for the rest of your life ... )

        1. Billa Bong
          FAIL

          It amuses me that you think the solution is to teach *people* to file things properly

          I store all my documents in a well organized way. It doesn't mean that I can find the document where I cited a particular passage from a book, or am looking for a particular error message in my log files. Hello?? Libraries don't work in the way that we need to search out computers.

          But I agree with you that if you write a document called "My C.V." and put it somewhere idiotic, and then can't find it... well, perhaps you weren't meant for the job.

        2. Billa Bong
          FAIL

          Oh, and let's not forget...

          That in order to correctly identify all the meta data for the *content* of a file that you're going to need in order to file things in a way that's easily locatable by *position* on the hard driver, you'll need to not only see the future, require about 10 times the hard drive space for the meta-data and soft-links to the file in question but you'd lose probably about a year of your life per file doing the categorizing and organizing.

          Hey, maybe I could employ a librarian to keep my computer organized? Nah, I'll just download Google Desktop. Oh, Sh...

        3. gzuckier

          My point, Ken Hagan, is "learn to file properly". → #

          Actually, there's two types of filing (or storing of objects, for that matter). One is the good old "a place for every thing and every thing in its place" system which results in pegboards with outlines of tools drawn on them, etc. the other is the good old "heap" where stuff is located by search when needed, with or without indexing depending on size/need. each system has pros and cons.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      I actually agree

      And I don't know why the computer industry never adopted the Dewey system for disk file metadata. I'm serious. It was a stonking idea.

      It could have been implemented very easily. I saw experiments being done over 20 years ago. Never saw the light of day. File indexing would have been a doddle if it had been adopted.

    3. BristolBachelor Gold badge

      Libraries & Jake

      So please jake, tell me how I ought to organise my library.

      When I have a file, say "2011-09-06_MG_2342.CR", where do I file it? Myself, I'd file it in 2011-09-06, I'd then use software to find it when I want it.

      What would you do? Would you copy it to the directory "Portrait", and also copy it to "Fashion", and also to "Red_dress", and also to "Iman", and also to "AM1178" and also to "Cibeles"......

      1. jake Silver badge

        @BristolBachelor

        Learn what meaningful subdirectory structures and meaningful filenames are. It's YOUR system, after all. That's what the "P" in "PC" is all about ... But I'll bite. In the given example, how about:

        ~/pseudoPr0n/female/Iman/RedDress/2011-09-06_MG_2342.CR

        Or something like that ... I'm not certain what the ".CR" extension is. Nor do I care. If I felt a need (unlikely), I'd link to it elsewhere in my system. I'll leave the methodology as to how that works as an exercise for the reader, just to save the mods a little reading time ;-)

  4. Forget It
    Thumb Up

    Copernic 2

    Copernic 2 - pre-lobotomized (into vers3) can still be made to work without upgrade nag:

    http://forum.oldversion.com/showthread.php?5261-Copernic-2&s=ed0af9c0c47fa401ec8cf807a1c7d76f&p=23623&viewfull=1#post23623

    works nice for me.

    1. DaiKiwi

      Copernic 2

      Agreed. I made the mistake of 'upgraging' to ver3 once. What a great leap backwards. Ver2 mostly does what I need, and is very handy for foing full text sarches - if only it would read inside .rar files.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Search, smerch ...

    I've always found something like find . -name a*.gif -exec ls {} \; for example has always worked just fine. Combined with grep I can look for content as well. You could even wrap it up in a pretty Zenity script to give it a GUI for the command-line phobic.

    *nix users don't need anything more, surely?

  6. Jim 59

    Desktop search

    I agree desktop search (with privacy) is highly desirable. I use a perl script in the absence of better tools (on Linux) but it asn't a patch on proper indexing.

    Backup tools could perhaps stand in here. They have to read every file periodically, so could build up a search index almost as a side product.

    1. LaeMing
      Happy

      Also would make another good reason to back up regularly.

      As if we should need one! But we do!

  7. Forget It
    Go

    Locate32

    Locate32 doesn't look inside files

    but is lightning quick compared to Win7 native search.

    http://www.locate32.net/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ... advanced tab?

      Did you try the advanced tab?

      Is has an option "File containing text" that at least works on code files.

  8. John Styles

    And in about 1996...

    ... there was AltaVista Desktop Search. Whatever happened to that?

    <ron manager>Small boys, Windows 95 for goal-posts, isn't it?</ron manager>

  9. Chimpofdoom!
    WTF?

    And that is a pity..

    "because the search engines built into Windows and Mac OS X"

    Personally I find spotlight works rather well in osx...

    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

      Spotlight

      Erm, yes and no. Ask it where the hosts file is, and it will tell you that there is no such file.

      It's ironic given that it was even Apple that said use spotlight to find it to fix a problem with Bonjour...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Finding the hosts file

        If you're looking for files like that, use Spotlight in the Finder. First click "File Name" to specify that you are searching by name (rather than content). By default, the Finder won't show files that the average user isn't even conscious of, e.g. invisible or system files. To include these items, click the + button to the right to add search criterion. If you're looking for the hosts file, select "System files" "are included". It finds mine in the blink of an eye. If you frequently want to search system/invisible files, click the "Save" button to retain the settings for future use.

        It's a shame the author wasn't more specific about why Spotlight doesn't work for them. I have huge archives of email, specifications, letters, quotes, technical documentation, and all the my current work documents, but Spotlight if almost miraculous when I try to find something. I don't get a huge number of results, and the document I'm looking for is almost always at the top.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          And...

          Spotlight's extensible arch means you can have plugins written (or try yourself with Xcode).

          Not enterprise but I was recovering files from iPhoto after a HD crash which is a nightmare due to thumbnails. Those exhaustive metadata options are amazing I thought I had it with 'pixel-width' but forgot about landscape bs portrait - god bless 'pixel count'

  10. Gerhard den Hollander

    Strigi + pet peeve

    It's called strigi, without the N, but since it should be stringed up ...

    What pisses me off most about all of those annoying desktop search tools (unless someone can point em to one that's different :) ) is that they are always indexing, and eating CPU cycles, even though they are only supposed to do this when Im idle.

    Having them continously index a 2T disk, even if they dont do anything, they still eat up a lot of memory.

    My ideal desktop search engine would:

    1) combine the search functionality found in Picture and Music programs (think amarok, digikam)

    2) recognises tags

    3) should be able to be told, go out at 23:55 and start indexing

    4) and be done indexing all my data well before 7:00 am in the morning

    5) be able to be smart enough to understand things like ``search in all my pictures'' or search al my word docs

    until the, Ill stick to mairix to earch my email once a night, digikam to search my pictures, and amarok to collect my music

    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

      You forgot...

      When you plug in a disk, it may decide to search that too, not only eating CPU/disk cycles, but also then preventing you from disconnecting the disk afterwards (or deleting directories, etc.).

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Eddy Ito

          Re: Excues me?

          I assume he was referring to the search process not letting the user delete a directory because it was busy indexing it nor will it allow the user to disconnect an external disk until the indexing is finished.

          I have run into the exact same problem just this past weekend with a 2 TB usb drive that was running close to 60% of capacity. After walking away in disgust at the slowness of the virus scan I came back to find the search indexer was busy doing its thing for another infuriating amount of time - I'm going for a coffee down at the pub boss. We wouldn't want to simultaneously perform a virus scan and indexing at the same time on an external drive that is going to get the same treatment on every computer it gets plugged into now would we? Some days you really want to find the git who caused all this by bringing a virus into the company on a usb stick and let the computer index and scan him.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Yes ... apologies

            My mis-reading.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Mushroom

          @craiggy: read the question again

          with less of an attitude. If the search process is scanning directories, of course your operating system will not let you delete them (while another process is using them). Why on earth would you think that the search process would want to delete directories?

  11. Jim 59

    @Craiggy

    Command line antics with "find" and "grep" won't search your documents, PDFs and spreadsheets. And shoving a binary file into grep will fail and likely bork your terminal session. Gone are the days when we kept our data in text files.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @ Jim 59

      Yes, they will. Excel and Word file do get picked up nicely. As for PDF's -- just use something like: acroread /a search='blah blah' *.pdf

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I could also point out ...

      That if you do all this as a low-priority cron job you can stuff the results into something like an sqlite database and search that instead. I'm not interested in displaying the file contents via stdout, just knowing they contain a particular string, and then storing the filename and location.

      So far this does seem to work extraordinarily well.

      Docs and XLS files do contain enough string data to be useful. Admittedly, .docx and their ilk don't but I'm not having to worry about them.

      1. Jim 59

        DIY search

        If you are keen, tools are around to dump Office and PDF into text formats which can then be searched. My perl script uses this and it works but it's still poor compared to the professional indexed searching we were promised years ago.

    3. teknopaul

      grep searches binary

      obviously, grep can't print a line of text it says something like binary file contains ..., but it finds it. and you don't have to hack the registry to get it to look

      1. Ben Tasker

        Simples

        pdftotext and antiword will both quite happily dump their respective formats to a text file, I've found pdftotext to be a little more reliable, though I occasionally hit issues with character sets depending what I'm indexing.

        I've had to build a better search because I'm too organised for my own good, but not always consistent. If something isn't where I think I would have put it, I can't usually guess where else it may have been filed.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Coffee/keyboard

      "Gone are the days"

      Careful - some people thought the idea of XML/text was a good idea. I never did; with all the extraneous punctuation etc. or should I say <etc>etc</etc> Several bytes more (and yes I know it's all to do with interoperability)

      Dare I finish off with etc? I may just have to XML your phone later.

  12. Derek Jones

    Possible alternatives

    Some possible alternative to consider:

    RECOLL http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

    and for the more technically oriented

    Sphinx http://sphinxsearch.com/about/sphinx

    1. browntomatoes
      Paris Hilton

      Recoll FTW

      Agreed, recoll is awesome... indexes contents of files and can handle quite a few file types. Also does a very good job of appearing to use next to no resources. My only complaint is that it doesn't work on Windows. Combine it with "locate" in regex mode and you have a very effective search solution.

      I find Everything (http://www.voidtools.com) is a good alternative to "locate" on Unix (for searching by indexed file name) but I haven't found a decent program which will index file contents yet on Windows.

  13. RichyS
    Thumb Up

    Spotlight

    Never found a problem with Spotlight in OS X.

    Very fast when coming up with a response, and in day to day operation it doesn't slow your computer down by constantly indexing (I'm looking at you Windows Search for XP) due to low level kernal hooks.

    I have a Win7 laptop too -- though waaay better than XP's woeful standard search, it's still not nearly as fast (or easy to organise) as Spotlight.

  14. hourglass

    I tried a few...

    Google desktop never worked for me (too slow and file number limitation) so I won't miss it.

    Among the others I tried:

    Copernic started crashing on my content

    Windows desktop search. No comment.

    Exalead that was too slow

    etc...

    I still use an old version of X1 (last free version).

    But I can't understand that there is nothing better widely available.

  15. mikeyw

    For the Mac...

    On my Mac I always use EasyFind (it's free) from DEVONtechnologies. It certainly beats Spotlight...

  16. Martin Ryan

    Solr?

    Has no one adapted Solr to do a desktop search?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, first thing I thought of too

      You could probably configure it and script it up over a weekend.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Cygwin and find/grep

    works wonders for me.

    (I don't like animated dogs, what a complete waste of CPU cycles that idea was).

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Ah nuts

    I've never really used Google Desktop, and it was never quite happy with Opera browser, which is my default. I'm sure it's fine and dandy in Chrome.

    But my wife is really going to miss Google Desktop: she had to fight tooth and nail to keep it at work since she uses it on a daily basis. She's still on Win XP too, which is pretty rubbish for search. Outlook's search is still terrible too.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ugggh

      Been off work for a while, I'd forgotten about the abortion that is search in Outlook. Thanks for reminding me what I'm going to have to deal with when I get back (wishes it was the worst thing too)

  19. Joe Harrison

    Tutorial?

    Many people say Windows 7 search is not half bad but I suspect I am not giving it a fair go. Anyone recommend a tutorial?

    I want the functionality to remain as near as possible to what I have now with Google Desktop on XP... type in "horcrux" and it will find any mention of horcrux either on local filestore or Outlook mail.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    "And they don't show information in context, which is vital."

    ^ This.

    I've just tried a search on my Mac. I have some similar filenames e.g. filename_1, filename_2 etc but the Spotlight results are truncated so I only get a long list of identical-looking "filenam..."

    Then I have these backed up onto an external hard drive, so I get a repeat of each of these with no indication (unless I hover over the result and wait for the tooltip to show) as to which one is where.

    That isn't very helpful at all. At least (IIRC) Google Desktop showed the path of the results.

    1. KroSha
      Thumb Up

      Truncated?

      Try clicking the "Show All" at the top of the list. That'll open a window where you can see the full name.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Thanks

        Thanks, that helps.

        Any idea on how to solve the 2nd issue of knowing where the files are? e.g. How to differentiate between my main folder and a backup folder?

        1. KroSha

          Paths

          At the bottom of that Show All window is the file path for the highlighted item. You may have to hover over long folder names to see them fully.

  21. banjomike
    FAIL

    WIndows 7 search in explorer is a waste of space

    XP was better. 7 is rubbish with wildcards, no date ranges except "a long time ago" or "earlier this year". Stupid pile of ....

  22. Old Handle

    Agent Ransack

    I found this an excellent replacement for Windows's built-in search, it's not index based though, so it's not particularly fast, but it's way more flexible, searches any kind of file, and it's free.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      +1 for Agent Ransack

      ...also a special mention for Agent Ransack's bigger brother File Locator Pro. If you're just looking for a file, then Everything is hard to beat:

      http://www.voidtools.com/

  23. Steve Evans

    I know the feeling...

    I was quite happy with Microsoft's desktop search 4 on XP. I could get it scanning UNC paths and all was well.

    Now having upgraded my hard drive to SSD and installed Win 7, I'm at a loss what to use for search. I've had to disable the built in Win 7 search for several reasons...

    1) I can't find where it's buried the ability to add UNC paths

    2) I can't find how to move the index to my D drive so it doesn't murder the SSD

    3) Searching specific file extensions is a pain in the arse.

    Basically they've tried to make it so user friendly, that doing slightly non-standard things is now very complicated... I'm sure the things I want to do can be done, and it would be great if someone could tell me how to relocate the index, but until then I guess I am just going to have to use my old XP machine running in VirtualBox (I won't go into the Virtual PC pain here) to find things!

  24. sigxcpu
    FAIL

    You don't know how to use Spotlight

    Just click on "show all in finder" and you will see the full name of the file.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    On the subject of search, and XP vs 7

    On IE7 (which is not available on Windows 7) I can right click on one of the folders in my favourites bar, and choose the "search" option - this is not available on IE8 or IE9.

    It would be really nice to have a utility that is a GUI for modifying the registration of file extensions - so that the inbuilt Windows XP search can search for text matches in files that have different extensions, such as .php, .html, .htm, rather than having to resort to registry edits to achieve it...

    (and I do not mean "windows desktop search" - which in my experience is a Utility in Futility.)

    I must admit, contextual search would be nice - but isn't that what folder structures are for?

    ;-)

  26. SDart

    SearchBlox

    Shame about Google desktop as it was actually quite good, but if you want a few more features use a lucene based search such as SearchBlox which I have found to be perfect for simple and complex searches across a multitude of filetypes. http://www.searchblox.com/

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    title

    never had this problem... I organise my data into a folder structure that makes sense to me, why would I waste CPU time when I can remember instead?

  28. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Meh

    Why search?

    I just have my system in a reasonably organised state and know where I put things. The only time I have a problem is with extremely badly written software that arbitrarily decides to poo all over the hard drive - such software is quickly removed.

  29. Matt K

    Spotlight — hmm

    I don't like Spotlight deciding what files I want to include in my searches. I'd quite like to have my Library files - particularly things like my Firefox userchrome.css - come up in searches, but Spotlight stubbornly refuses to index it, even if I try to force it to include the target directories. A search engine that thinks it knows better than me where I want to look, and won't let me change that, ain't on to a winner.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not a problem

      @Matt K: "I don't like Spotlight deciding what files I want to include in my searches"

      I've already answered this above, but this is only the default behaviour (for people who don't even know they have a Library folder). Just add a search criterion for "System files" "are included", and you're away. And *all* files are indexed - they results are returned like lightning.

  30. Test Man
    Thumb Up

    NirsoftSearchMyFiles

    http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html

    Works for me, better than the nonsense Vista and 7 search.

  31. PhilBack

    Agent ransack

    Not too bad and still around. May be slow but works.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everything!

    Haven't people heard of Everything http://voidtools.com/

    I personally prefer the awesomely powerful brute-force search in Dr. Opus it is can do stuff which most search tools can only dream of doing.

  33. GrantB
    Boffin

    amazing that search is so borked

    I need search to work on my local drives; I have thousands of source code files in multiple development languages and trying to find functions, tags, variables in source and related log files or other output files (XML, CSV and PDF etc) that contain key words is stupidly hard for something that should just work (and used to).

    Windows 7 and built in search can help narrow files it knows about, but is amazingly slow; I can start a search for a keyword in an indexed location, and manually open a command window, grep and find the files I need faster than it can complete. WTF?

    Google Desktop was even faster, but didn't give much in the way of narrowing selections (I didn't generally want email searched for instance). Sad but true - in 2011 we still have to resort to command line grep

  34. Peter Fox
    Alert

    When my brains go fizzt...

    ...which is quite a lot now (age) a TRUSTED content indexer is valuable. (Just this last week I spent ages certain that I'd already written a particular routine ...) Copernic worked for me but I had to block its ability to talk to the internet. before it was acceptable. Now it looks as if it needs a re-install for some unknown reason.

    By the way. Lots of people use non MS legacy apps. Older search programs are often useful in this respect. The moral of the story is do not uninstall older search engines until you're sure the newer version is aware of all your 15 years of archive.

  35. Kev99 Silver badge

    Free search engine

    I snagged this freebie from CNet - UltraFileSearch. The interface is a tad clumsy, but it's a damned sight better than that POS in Win7.

  36. NotMyRealName
    Holmes

    Elementary -- Total Commander!

    I gave up bothering with Windows' file management nontilities years ago. Couldn't now live without Total Commander. Costs about 32 euros but you can try it free for 30 days. TC is also regularly updated and -- thus far -- once you've paid for it, subsequent updates are free. Agree with the comments about using folders to sensibly differentiate files. But, if I'm looking for something within a file, TC is the answer. Why not give it a trial?

    http://www.ghisler.com/index.htm

    (I have no connection with Ghisler; just think that a good product deserves to be recommended.)

  37. Zoolook
    Holmes

    Nice spotlight frontend...

    Hi,

    A nice Replacement for Spotlight is "houdahspot" or "tembo".

    And well,for some what larger needs, MS Windows Enterprise Search 2010 Express is still free.

  38. Wintermute
    Thumb Up

    Thanks, Andrew Orlowski, you have made my day

    Hey Andrew,

    You put to words how I have been feeling all weekend since I learned that Google Desktop is being killed. There is no equivalent to this program, and the built-in search in Windows are brain dead compared to Google Desktop.

    Can we petition Google to turn Google Desktop into a commercial product? Maybe if we all ofter to pay 50USD / 50GBP / 50EUR (depending on where we live), Google will decide to keep this "unprofitable" program in development.

    Quite honestly, I was blown away by the quality of Google Desktop when it came out, and to this day I can't believe that Google has been giving it away for free.

    / Wm

  39. Youvegottobe Joking

    RIP Google Desktop

    Or is it?

    Its unlikely that they are just going to hit a kill switch and everyones google desktop will just stop working ... its still better than the competition.

  40. JohnG

    UltraFileSearch

    I use UltraFileSearch and prefer it to the built-in search of Windows 7.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Blinkx Pico

    You may scoff, but Blinkx Pico worked brilliantly for me, especially for long, complex queries. Seems to have gone from the Blinkx website now - pity.

  42. DutchP
    Coat

    KDE - Nepomuk/strigi, anyone?

    Ok, so I'm feeling brave today.

    I know it really sucked in earlier KDE 4.x versions, but ever since 4.6 (i think) it doesn't eat too many resources anymore, doesn't get in the way, searches tags, names, file content and what have you. And it's nicely integrated with dolphin, too.

    For example, you can tag your photo's in digikam, but you can use the same tags for other stuff as well. So you can connect whatever you like, in whichever way you like, and you'll even be able to find it later.

    Mine's the fireproof coat. Or at least I seriously hope so

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why is this such a big issue?

    I'm always amazed by how much searching people need to do. Why not just remember where you put things? It's much easier. For those times when you really can't remember, Spotlight seems to do the trick very nicely - I've never personally understood the great need for Spotlight replacement apps such as Caffeine but I know some people who swear by them.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The low quality of Windows search

    The low quality of Windows desktop search seems to be a constant; they keep changing it but it doesn't get better.

    I've been using "Locate 32" for a couple years now.

  45. joe.user

    This does files only, but the best job at it

    http://fwd4.me/0Ang

  46. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    no problems with SpotLight

    i'm a very happy SSpotLight user on OSX - I agree about searching on WindowsXP/vista/7 being generally crap... and on BSD/Linux I'm quite happy with locate and find

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