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dtSearch recently distributed a review copy of version 7.65 (build 7907) which I have been using for a few days. If you aren’t familiar with the product, it’s a desktop search engine on steroids. It does, not just the desktop, but your entire network. The idea is to make any text document available to you in a flash, not matter what drive, or even what PC, it’s located on.
It’s actually pretty powerful stuff and may not be necessary for the casual computer user, but the techie it’s pretty cool, and for business this type of tool is really a necessity.
For a single home user the price is $199, but volume licenses are available and the price goes down as the amount of seats in the business goes up. Beginning at $160 for 5-24 users and going all the way to $60 for 2000+ users.
Let me take you on a quick walk-through of my experience.
The download was 42 MB which isn’t too bad compared to some bloated software that’s out there today.
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Installation took only a couple of minutes. There’s an option for a Custom Install for those who like to tweak.
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It creates the usual Start menu entry. As you can see from the below screenshot, it is 64 bit compatible.
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Once you have it set up then your first order of business is to tell it what files you want it to index. The first time you click on dtSearch Desktop you will be prompted to do this. You can always go back later and easily add, remove, or change choices you make here. You can also choose certain file types to include or exclude.
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After that was done I did a test search of the word genealogy, which is a hobby of my family and appears in quite a few files. Here is the start of a search.
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And, the results.
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The Preferences, which can be found under Options in the main menu, allow for a lot of customization. Enough to make almost any IT department happy.
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Since I have been using it for a home network I have not had occasion to test all aspects of what this program can do. And for the average home user, a free product such as Google Desktop Search would probably be sufficient, but for business (which this is really geared towards) this product could be a real productivity tool and time-saver.
