Desktop Search Engines Reviews

Best Desktop Search Engines Reviews: (out of 17)
PC Pro, PC Magazine, PC World

Best Desktop Search Engines: (out of 15)
Copernic Desktop, Yahoo! Desktop, X1 Enterprise Search

Fast Answers - Best Desktop Search Engines

Top Rated	What the Research Says
• Copernic Desktop (free, http://www.copernicdesktop.com) >> Where to buy	Best desktop search engine. For searching your own files on a hard drive or network, reviews recommend Copernic Desktop as the simplest to install and use, and best for most users. Reviews also like its security -- since it's a stand-alone software program that keeps all information on your PC or network, no data is ever transmitted online. It uses a minimum of system resources and file space, and indexes most files, including Outlook e-mail messages, as soon as they're received. Copernic works with Exchange servers, but it can't see inside zipped files.
• Yahoo! Desktop (free, http://desktop.Yahoo!.com) >> Where to buy	Best desktop search, search toolbar, search engine combo. Yahoo! Desktop often gets excellent scores in reviews, and Yahoo! usually ranks second for best Internet search engine (behind Google). So if you want one integrated product that covers all the bases, Yahoo! is a good choice. Yahoo! Desktop, when used with a free expansion kit, searches the most file types, and reviews praise the way it filters and previews results. It uses Yahoo! to search the web, and the Yahoo! Toolbar includes anti-spyware tools and a pop-up blocker.
• X1 Enterprise Search (free, http://www.x1.com) >> Where to buy	Desktop search engine for networks. X1 uses the same technology that powers Yahoo! Desktop, but the X1 Enterprise desktop search engine can search across a network. Some fee-based add-ins are available for special business applications, including Exchange servers, but reviews say the basic X1 works fine for a home computer.
• Google Desktop 4 (free, http://desktop.google.com/) >> Where to buy	Easy to use, with fun extras. Reviews downgrade Google Desktop's desktop search filters and previews. But if you love nifty little desktop gadgets and games, this desktop search engine gives you loads of choices -- if you have space on your screen. If you stay connected to the web, you can have these gadgets pull in the information you use most from the web. One bonus is that you can use Google Desktop to search a remote computer, but that setup is tricky and searches are limited.
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Full Story

What the experts say, our analysis, and more...

Updated September 2006

Internet search engines help you find what you need online. Desktop search engines, on the other hand, are small software programs that can search millions of files on your computer and network in seconds. The best desktop search engines give previews of the files in the results. That way you can find that lost e-mail and forward it right from the search engine. Reviews say that Mac operating systems have fine desktop search built in, but for a PC, desktop search engines work much better than using Windows built-in search. For searching just the Internet, see our report on Internet-based search engines .

We found the most comprehensive recent review of desktop search engines at PC Pro, a UK computer publication, where editors compare ten products based on an identical set of search perimeters on an assortment of test computers. Both PC Magazine and PC World have kept updating their earlier comparison reviews of desktop search engines, so both now review Google Desktop 4 (the latest version). While the consensus of reviews ranks several desktop engines as worth considering, each has special advantages and disadvantages.

Expert reviews recommend selecting a desktop search engine with some care. Although these tools are all free, it takes time to install and configure them, then wait while they index your hard drive. Some desktop search engines are lighter on computer resources than others. The PC Pro review notes that Ask Jeeves Desktop Search 2 (now Ask Desktop Search) takes too many system resources. Reviews note that Watson, which continuously searches the web in the background while you work, also takes a lot of system resources. MSN Windows Desktop Search has some nice features, but some reviews complain that it can cause system instability, and can be difficult to uninstall. ... Continued

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