Desktop Search Round-up: Ask Jeeves Desktop Search Ask Jeeves Hops on the Desktop Search Train Joseph Moran
Introduction
Those who remember trying to find information on the Internet prior to the advent of the modern search engine would probably prefer to forget the experience. Of course, finding relevant information on the Web has gotten markedly better over the years, and now attention is turning toward providing equivalent search capabilities on individual computers. While not rivaling the sheer volume of information on the Web, the contents of a typical PC can be substantial, often making searching through them a daunting task.
Late last year Google was the first out of the gate with a utility to efficiently help conquer the accumulated morass of information on users' computers. Since then, however, several other giants of Web search, including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AskJeeves, have each released their own similar tools. Like their predecessor, Google Desktop Search, these new offerings are all provided to the user gratis. They're also all considered beta software at the time of this writing and are likely to be the subject of frequent updates until official launches are ready.
Compared to Windows' built-in search tool, all three utilities proved adept at finding information on a file-laden hard drive in a short period of time (after being given enough time to create an initial search index, of course), slicing through search tasks like a hot knife through butter. Since they're all free, which one is right for you will likely come down to characteristics like file support, user interface, and customizability — factors that vary considerably among the four major alternatives now available.
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search
Next up is Ask Jeeves Desktop Search, which is currently available for download in beta format. Like Yahoo! Desktop Search, Ask Jeeves Desktop Search requires Windows XP or 2000 to run, and it uses a Windows application rather than a browser window for its search interface.
File and application support for ADS is limited and lacks the breadth and depth of competing tools from Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft. That said, it does support the most ubiquitous file types used today. The range of searchable data for ADS spans files created in Microsoft Office 2000 or later, including .doc, .xls, and .ppt, and Microsoft Outlook e-mail. This list noticeably fails to include Outlook Express — Ask Jeeves says that capability will be forthcoming.
Although Ask Jeeves cites the ability to search Web page history, we could find no evidence of this feature — only the ability to search within Internet Explorer Favorites.
In the realm of digital media, ADS supports the most popular forms of still graphics, video, and audio files, including JPEG, GIF, MPEG, MP3, and WMA. Notably absent, at least for now, is support for PDF or any kind of compressed file.
After first installing ADS, you can choose whether you want to limit indexing to e-mail plus the files in My Documents and on the Desktop, or include all files on the system. You also can select one of two modes for indexing — "gradual" (the default) or "fast." The latter comes with a caveat that it could slow down your system, a warning we definitely should have heeded. Instead, we blithely chose to index all files under the fast setting, and it wasn't long before this caused the utility to consume so much CPU bandwidth (well over 90%) that our system became about as responsive as a sloth on sedatives.
Manually closing the process, rebooting the system, and de-selecting the fast option restored some alacrity to our test system, but then the indexing process proceeded at a rather leisurely pace ... over 2½ hours later, Ask Jeeves' index was still only 93% complete. In contrast, Yahoo! Desktop Search completed its initial index of our test system in just over an hour.
