Copernic, a program that helps you find stuff on your PC
There are a few programs out there that index the contents of your PC hard drive for quick search. [Mac users who are running Tiger have Spotlight; PC users will eventually have something similar, when Vista makes its way onto their PCs.] I used Google Desktop for a while. It serves up the contents of your drive in the same way that the Google search engine serves up the contents of the Internet, in your browser. It’s an elegant solution, but wasn’t a natural fit for me.
After I got my tablet PC, I spent a little time looking into alternatives and found one I like very much. It’s called Copernic and it’s a free download. It doesn’t use your browser to display search results; it puts up its own window where it is easy to narrow the search by category — to email, files, contacts, pictures, etc. It is also straightforward to refine the search. The search results are very well organized and easy to follow. You can even take actions on some of what it finds. For example, when I search through email, I inevitably end up looking through some garbage. I can delete those emails from the Copernic window. That’s useful.
By default, the part of Copernic that is busy indexing and reindexing the contents of your hard drive suspends itself when the computer is active, watiing until things have been quiet for 2 minutes before resuming. I wish all the scanners and indexers behaved so well. It also installs a little search box in the task bar. In general, I find the interface very natural.
Powered by Qumana
