How To Find The Files In Your PC

If you're part of the "other 90 percent," you might have had a bit of Mac envy if you read my recent review of Apple's new Tiger operating system. Windows users take heart. All is not lost.

I praised Apple's new Spotlight feature that allows users to quickly find any file, email message, contact, image or application based on any word or phrase contained in the document.

I pointed out that there are a number of Windows programs that perform similar functions but added, "because Spotlight is integral to the Mac operating system, it is not only faster than those Windows add-on products; it's also more elegant and easier to use."

What I wrote was true, but just because the PC products aren't quite as good as what is now available for the Mac, doesn't mean they aren't worth trying out. In fact, there are a number of free Windows desktop search programs that do a reasonably good job of helping you locate anything on your computer.

Web powerhouses Google and Yahoo both offer free programs, as does Microsoft.

These programs will not only find files that contain the word or words you're seeing, but also emails and contacts from Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.

All of these products work by creating an index. Think of it like an index of a book. If you were a really fast reader, you could locate a word in a book by reading through the pages it until you found it. But it would be much faster to look in the index and go to the page number listed. These desktop searchers do just that: their key words index tells them where the files are located.

Whichever desktop search program you use, you'll have to wait a bit while it indexes your hard drive. How long that takes depends on how many files or email messages you have but it could take hours, so it's best to let it run overnight. Once the initial index is complete, the programs index on the fly in the background.

Indexing is a relatively intense process so if an index is in progress, your PC could be pretty sluggish. To get around that, the programs suspend the indexing if you do anything at your PC, such as moving the mouse or typing at the keyboard.

The interface of Google's free desktop search program is virtually identical to the Google web interface. In fact, it integrates with the web interface so you see the desktop search results along with web results.

While Google's desktop search is homegrown, Yahoo has licensed its technology from X1 (www.x1.com) that sells a slightly more robust program for $74.95. As far as I can tell there isn't a great deal of difference between the free Yahoo version and the paid version. Unlike Google search, it is not integrated into the browser.

Personally, I think that's a good thing. Although there is something to be said for having one interface for all search, there is also something to be said for having the right tool for the right job and, when it comes to searching through files and email, I like having a dedicated program that presents the information in a concise and easy-to-locate manner.

My other favorite free desktop search program is from Copernic. Like Yahoo, it places an optional search bar in the lower right corner of the screen where you can quickly type in a word or phrase you're seeking. With Copernic, you have to specify whether you're looking for a word in an email, file, contact, music, picture or video while Yahoo displays all the information automatically.

The advantage of Copernic is that the screen is less cluttered, which makes the result a bit easier to visualize. If, for example, you decide to search email, that's all you will see. But the good news is that a box at the bottom of the results window will give you a summary of search results from other sources, such as contacts.

So, while none of these programs is quite as good as Apple's Spotlight, they're all pretty good which, considering the price, isn't so bad. Of course, Microsoft plans to offer a well-integrated desktop search program in the next version of Windows, but don't search for a copy of that program anytime soon. It's not scheduled to be released until Christmas 2006.

By Larry Magid