If a keyword search alone is sufficient, these advanced options can be hidden from view.Ĭopernic Desktop Search displays located multimedia content in the inline preview window.Īfter you pick a search category and CDS has found information based on your search term (which seemingly occurs in the blink of an eye), the search tool displays links to other categories that had results (as well as how many), so that you can easily view those additional results. Each offers an area to refine your search with added parameters that are relevant to the category, including file size or date, From: or To: fields, subject line and so forth. In the CDS application itself, large and easy-to-read icons along the top let you select the broad category you want to search through (i.e., e-mail, files, pictures, etc). You can launch it from an icon in the system tray or use the “Deskbar” (embedded in the Windows Taskbar) to save time. The CDS interface, on the other hand, is so clean and well laid-out that it’s hard to believe the software is free. Some desktop search tools, while powerful, blunt their usability with busy and sometimes confusing interfaces. One of the best aspects of CDS is its top-notch user interface. Unique to CDS (at least among the free desktop search tools) is the ability to search mapped network folders as well as local hard drives. Searchable digital media formats include iTunes, QuickTime and Real Media files in addition to MP3, WMA, MPEG and so on. (Of note, Google recently added support for non-Microsoft browsers and e-mail clients to its own tool as well.)Ĭopernic provides equally broad support for image and multimedia formats. If you use the increasingly popular Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, CDS will let you search messages and contacts from that application, too. Similarly, Microsoft’s e-mail applications are not the only ones CDS will index. WordPerfect files can be indexed as well.ĬDS can also index browser histories and favorites, and not just for InternetĮxplorer — it searches Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape (v6 or later) as well. HTML, XML, PDF, and even documents from most versions of PowerPoint documents as well as both e-mail and contacts from Outlook and Obvious candidates include Microsoft Office files such as Word, Excel and The types of files CDS can index are varied and extensive, making it one of the more versatile of the various desktop search tools currently available. On our test system (a 1.2 GHz Pentium M notebook with 640 MB of RAM), it took 94 minutes for CDS to distill a bit less than 10,000 documents into about 75 MB of indexing data containing over 172,000 keywords. If you’re willing to walk away from your computer for a long while after installation you won’t mind, however.ĬDS indexes data on the fly, but by default halts the process any time the computer is in use. One nit to pick: the utility offers no time frame for when it will complete the initial indexing — it doesn’t even display the percentage of indexing completed. We reviewed version 1.5 (beta) of the utility which, like its predecessors, is available as a free download at Installing CDS is quick and easy, and upon completion the utility immediately starts indexing the hard drive contents. An excellent interface that manages to be user-friendly without being overly Spartan adds to its appeal.Ĭopernic Desktop Search (CDS) runs on any version of Windows from 98 up through XP. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have contributed utilities to the category.Ĭopernic, another company well versed in the science of search, offers a tool for the task that combines many of the best features of its competitors along with unique and useful features of its own. No less a who’s who list of Web search companies than Ask Jeeves, To help with the task, lots of vendors have developed desktop search utilities that put Windows built-in tools to shame and that can make searching the bowels of your computer considerably more efficient and fruitful. ![]() ![]() Copernic Desktop Search shows at a glance how many other categories your search term was found in, but offers limited preview capabilities.
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