Desktop Search Round-Up : part II, conclusions and final thoughts
Thomas Menguy | October 25, 2005Again, I ‘ve tried software to … gain time, putting my business laptop stability in jeopardy, loosing hours of processing and hard drive stress use for indexing and re-indexing my files, slowing down my PC to the point where it was barely usable … everything to be sure at the end that I have choosen the best desktop search application … what a satisfaction Despite this infinite source of happiness, I hope this test will help you choose the best solution for you!
So it is now time to finish this review… Be sure to read the first part, for all the installation issues (it was first posted in the Menguy’s blog and copied back here, it is why it seems to have been written few days ago).
First a comment about my setup : I ran the four desktop search engines at the same time during few weeks. My PC was slow, but usable, and I tried, as much as possible to do the same queries on the four engines, here are my first conclusiuons about speed, correctness … and usefulness of the results.
- Copenic Desktop Search: my former choice, compared to the other speed is ok, below average in number of results found … and not so great in usefulness and relevance.
- Yahoo: ok, it is speedy to find result … but slooooow down my PC, cause it doesn’t know how to index in the background at each file change, many results are found, but the relevance is average
- Google Desktop Search: speed is ok, number of results : not comparable to Yahoo and Microsoft BUT, to be honest it was easier to find the information I was really looking for.
- Microsoft Desktop Search: rather “slow” search (compared to the other 3, but acceptable in a day to day use), many results (best of all) and relevance is nearly on par with Google’s one.
So after this first round I’ve decided to remove Yahoo Desktop Search, with no doubts: this application is ugly (ok, ok it’s subjective, but it is my PC and my eyes after all no?), slows down the PC way too much when indexing, and was not bringing enough search power compared to the other 3.
I’ve also removed my beloved Copernic … a neat application but that fall really behind Google and Microsoft.
My PC was now loaded with Google and Microsoft, and I’ve followed my habit to query both engines with my queries. I’ve also added to google some nice plugins to make it index my email attachements (a shame that it was not in by default) or chm files… and after 1 Month of test here are my thoughts:
- My PC was sloooow … especially after some google tweaking and plugin addition
- Microsoft really find more results that Google (partial words are supported, more file formats, etc)
- Search speed: Google is the clear winner here.
- Search result presentation: Microsoft has a bug here, it always display results with “little icon” option, the “large icon” choice is great cause it displays, as Google does, a snippet of the document with the search keywords highlighted … but everytime the “little icon” option is reverted back. Google presents the first few results in the floating bar, if you want more it opens your browser with a typical google serach result page, neat. So I really prefer Google in that aspect.
- Relevance: Microsoft Desktop Search gives more results, it’s a fact for me, but it is really easy to find the right one with their rating, plus the large icon option. Google is good also and many times you pick your information in the first few items … but sometimes the information is simply missing, and found by Microsoft Search … never on the other side. So at the end of the test I was, perhaps subjectively, more confident in Microsoft (did I really write that???!!! more confident in microsoft…pfff I’m aging).
Did I say my PC was slooooow now? Disabling Google Desktop Search made it quick again, so with my above comments the choice was clear, hard to accept for me, the gmail, google reader and google white knight … but Microsoft Desktop Search is my choice.
I’ve really changed my habits thanks to those applications, remembering where I’ve put this-so-important-document is now not so important … and above all it let me go with my natural untidy way with no remorse … and that alone is a big one for me .
The other implication came from my GTD organization : the famous “reference” pool of document can now be left untidy, flat, with no organization, cause it is fully searchable, more on that later.
Thomas
[...] I’ve missed this one … even if we are
Everything and the Mobile Software Universe… » Alternate way to access services on a phone: Zi makes progress with Qix | September 28, 2006[...] I’ve missed this one … even if we are working with Zi as an IP provider for predicitve text input, I’ve never heard about Qix (see the Zi Qix Web Sit). It really looks like the Palm Treo Initiate launcher : use any bit of information to quickly access the data … errrr everything is about data those days (see my 3 to 4 previous posts). In the case of Qix it is only text, but for initiate it is also voice,… google search on the phone anyone? coupled with applications to display and use the found data…: THIS is interesting, and a good alternate way to the menustrees. I am a convinced defensor to the all-flat-search-by-content organization oposed to the classical folder trees (perhaps because I’m NOT organized , see my post about desktop search engines ). It should be pushed a little more to also launch actions, etc. Definitively something to keep in mind for user interactions! they also bought Decuma it seems, a very powerfull text recognition engine for stylus input (found an the defunct Sony Clié PalmOS devices). No Tags [...]