Copernic says CDS 2.0 is designed to maintain a highly level of computer responsiveness by being conservative in the use of system resources like CPU, memory and disk space. On-the-fly features of CDS like the aforementioned spelling correction and query completion were nearly instantaneous, though we never had much to complain about in that regard with CDS 1.7 either.
CDS 2.0's default indexing schedule dictates that most items are indexed daily at midnight, but you can customize that schedule as well as other aspects of indexing behavior. For example, CDS won't index when a system is in use or under significant load from other applications, or when your laptop is running on battery power.
Integration
CDS offers a couple of ways to conduct searches without having to open the application first. In addition to IE and Firefox toolbars, one of the most handy features of Copernic Desktop Search is its Deskbar, which sits on the Windows Taskbar just left of the tray. Always a convenient feature, CDS 2.0 manages to make the Deskbar even more so with a redesign.
In the current version of CDS, before performing a Deskbar search you have to pick a category, and then the results appear via the full CDS application window. By contrast, when you type a search term into the CDS 2.0 Deskbar the first few results pertaining to that term for each category are immediately displayed in a pop-up window.
Clicking on a category button will display results just for that category, and since the Deskbar's results window is scrollable, you can see all the results without having to launch CDS. Although clicking on an item in the Deskbar is supposed to launch it in its host application, it didn't work for us — a glitch we assume won't find its way into the final product.
Conclusion
With Copernic Desktop Search 2.0, the company has managed to make a strong product even stronger. While it lacks the frills of some competitors (think Google Gadgets) it does what it's meant to do — provide an easy and powerful way to search through the morass of e-mails, documents, media files, and other detritus on your computer.
Pros: New and improved, easier-to-use interface in v2.0; lets you easily save searches for reuse; spelling correction feature and auto-completion of search terms; support for non-IE browsers and mail clients (Firefox, Netscape, Thunderbird, Eudora); capably searches network drives; extensive list of file types supported (including PDF support)
Cons: Once the product officially ships some of the features may only be available in paid version (pricing not yet determined for commercial version); preview pane doesn't display all files natively
