Everything Search Engine

[sechs]

http://www.voidtools.com/

I've just installed this, and it seems pretty amazing for something so light. I may never use Windows's search function again....

 

[timwhit]

Just installed it. It indexed 4 volumes in a few seconds. Why aren't other search tools this fast?

 

[Will Rickards]

Searches only by name though. That is not what I spend most of my time searching on. Usually I'm doing a partial name match with the containing text argument.

 

[timwhit]

I do a lot of name searches, so this should save me a lot of time waiting. It also includes regexp support. If regular expressions weren't so hard to write that would be useful too.

 

[CougTek]

Am I the only one to never search anything on my computers because I always know where my stuff is?

 

[MaxBurn]

Am I the only one to never search anything on my computers because I always know where my stuff is?

Nope. I search help files for products often but that's about it.

Most people aren't really in touch with their file system as they should be.

 

[Tannin]

Probably, Coug. I use search maybe a few times a year on my own systems - prety much always when I'm hunting for something half-remembered that didn't seem important enough to be worth filing properly at the time.

On customer machines, of course, anything can be anywhere, so I use it regularly. And I despise the way they dumbed down a perfectly good interface with the change from W2k to XP. That bloody dog makes my bloodboil.

 

[Stereodude]

So turn it off.

 

[Handruin]

Am I the only one to never search anything on my computers because I always know where my stuff is?

Only for email content. The windows desktop search integrates and indexes outlook which is what I have to use at work. Anything else I rarely have to search for actual files because like you, I know where they are located.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't ever need to search for files. I'm anal-retentive about putting things where they belong so I don't have to.

Email, maybe, but even then it's unlikely. Even though I keep every message I have in my inbox I can usually narrow down date and sender that searching isn't an issue.

 

[Handruin]

I could probably narrow them down also and find them, but the desktop search is way faster than me clicking and hunting through my folders.

 

[sechs]

You people and your memory. I lose files on my desktop.

 

[Handruin]

I have those moments also.

 

[timwhit]

I develop a variety of applications, some of them have over 5000 source files. Search saves a lot of time when trying to find a specific file, where I know the name or part of the name, but maybe not the exact location in the directory structure.

 

[Fushigi]

The folder organization scheme falls apart at some point. I have too may files and/emails that fall into multiple categories. So when I'm filing them I always reacha decision point as to which folder to put the file/folder in. Regardless of which option I take, at some point in the future I may be scanning the other folders lookoing for this item.

I use the folders as we have choice. but knowing that my data doesn't fall into them neatly, I find items using search.

What we need is a tagging file system instead of or in addition to folders. An indexed search is as close as we can conveniently get to tags right now.

 

[Mercutio]

I use the folders as we have choice. but knowing that my data doesn't fall into them neatly, I find items using search.

For those things, there are symlinks and shortcuts.

 

[Chewy509]

The funny thing is, if I'm doing a name only search I just do the following from a command prompt:

cd \
dir /p /s *.jpeg (replacing *.jpeg with your search)

a lot quicker than windows search function....

But I do disgress, I only have to do it on other peoples PCs, and I typically know where I store my stuff...

 

[Fushigi]

Symlinks are OK but that's an extra file management step that the average person isn't going to want to do. Being able to tag files seems a heck of a lot easier to me; just apply lables like you do to GMail messages.

 

[MaxBurn]

Oh email I search all the damn time, I even have a special archive file where I save the really important stuff but I also load the subject up with key words so I can search faster at that level rather than diving down into the message body.