"Best Little" search prog? Scopeware Vision -- alternatives to, problems with, etc…

For those of you familiar with (what I would term) graphical search tools like "Scopeware Visionâ€, I would like to get some feedback from you (…and for those of you not familiar with this type of tool, you might want to check it out, http://www.scopeware.com/ as it should be a very useful tool for most folks in this age of super-giga hard drives…)

Anyway, I recently stumbled across "Scopeware" and am currently only a few minutes into trying it out on a 30 day trial, and although (for me) it is not what I would call real "intuitive" to use, it does look like an extremely useful tool once you get over the learning curve on how to use it for everything…

But, what I am wondering is, do any of you know of similar types of progs that maybe I should check out before handing over $25 for the license to Scopeware…? And, specifically pertaining to Scopeware, are there any precautions that I should be aware of (like, do you ever reach a point where even the tool becomes cumbersome, or overloaded, or slow, or?)?

 

keywester - I completely agree with PeteC.

I have one server with some pretty large drives. AgentRansack does a wonderful job.

MainFileServer
C - 14.65GB
G - 341.82GB
H - 341.82GB
I - 752.02GB
S - 19.19GB

 

Well, I too have been using Agent Ransack (hereafter referred to as "˜AR’) as my main search tool to find stuff for a long long time, and now, after a few hours of checking out "Scopeware" (hereafter "˜SW’), and comparing it against AR, I really think you all oughta take another, longer look, unless your conclusions are based totally on AR being freeware and SW being costware, in which case I would agree, zero $ is better than $30, BUT!

edit: note at bottom, SW does have a free version...

But first, I am not posting back to be contrary, and I have no affiliation with the developers of SW "“ my intent is solely to try to be helpful, cause I think you all took too quick of a look and consequently missed some important things that might be beneficial to you, and others (especially with all those gigs of data on those "pretty large drives" Newt…) "“ either that, or I am missing something, like maybe there is a way newer release of AR that I don’t know about? Or, are you actually referring to the "File Locator Pro" version?

edit: I have the 1.7.3 version of AR, which is the current free version...

Anyway, here’s just the tip of the iceberg from my perspective.

After initially indexing/cataloging ALL of my data with Scopeware, including Outlook emails (and all other Outlook "itemsâ€, i.e. notes, tasks, contacts, etc…), all MS Office files, etc., I ran a little comparison test, doing a search on a one word subject that I commonly use throughout everything that I do…

The results were that AR took every bit of ten minutes to find only a few of the WORD files on the search argument subject…

SW found ALL emails, ALL text documents, and so on, in about ten seconds, and the results were provided such that a segment of the start of each document was available to peruse, along with a small visual page snapshot, negating the need to open the hits to see exactly what they contained.

Ten minutes, compared to ten seconds, more thorough results, presented in a manner much easier to locate the needed data… And like I said, just the tip of the iceberg, as SW also has other components like a customizable RSS feed feature that is pretty danged handy, saves a lot of time and effort. Which is the bottom line "“ "Time is Moneyâ€, and I think I am gonna shell out the $30 and save myself a lot of time, unless someone can point out the errors of my conclusions… Oh, noticed that there is a free version of SW, but it has banner ads (which are not present in the trial version that I am using), so in that case cost would not be a comparison factor.

To be fair, in addition to some of the better tip-of-the-iceberg "positives" on SW, I have to point out some of the hidden "negativesâ€.

- the initial indexing can take hours (depending on the amount of data you choose to index)

- subsequent indexing of new data does entail slight overhead

- supposedly overhead causes slowdowns on a fast machine, but did not notice any slowdown on my 1 gig ddr ram, 2.6 GHz system

- there is a learning curve, and in order to eventually save time, you need to go through the help info

So, was I missing something? Is there some way that you all turn that ten minute search time in AR into 10 seconds? I didn’t see an index feature, not in the version that I have anyway…

edit: some links to reviews follow, which point out the Scopeware features better than I can in this tight space, FWIW...

http://www.gcpcug.org/review_detail.php?idpick=18

http://www.pcnet-online.com/content...ware-vision.htm

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.c...cle.php/2193081

 

Sounds like it may just be a better app then. Thanks for the additional information. And no, $30 isn't a consideration if you need to do searches often.

If they got the indexing thing right (like M$ never seems to have done) then it certainly should give you much faster results. I can imagine that for many situations, Scopeware would be worth way more than you would pay for it.

Not sure I want to jump right now though. The two 340Gb drives listed above would probably take way more than 'hours' to complete the indexing. Since I don't need to search very often, probably not worth the effort.

 

Certainly any searcher that indexes the files will find them faster than one which doesn't. But indexing takes time and is never completely up to date.

Retry your experiment with AR. First, search your drive for something. Then, without closing AR, search for something else more obscure. The second search is many times faster than the first. AR found 2983 .exe files on my drive in less than an eye blink. It appears that the first search does some caching, though I haven't been able to determine where. Perhaps memory.

 

Abraxas:

You are quite correct, the second (and third) AR searches did execute in about 1/10th the time of the the first search, so it must be doing some kind of caching, or something.

However, the first AR search did take a deplorably longer time compared to the SW search, and even the second and third AR searches, altho faster than the first, were still quite a bit longer than the SW search.

Even so, the real killer was that AR did not even begin to find the number of files that SW did -- or, stated more accurately, SW quickly found ALL the files including emails and Outlook PIM items, whereas AR found only a few text files. In the case of AR, just how valuable is a firearm that fires significantly slower and is considerably less accurate? I guess if you are in the backyard plinking at cans, no big deal, but if you are out in the real world and need unbeatable speed and total accuracy......

Regarding the ongoing indexing that Scopeware does: it is done in the "background ", and there are numerous setting that you can use to control how current the indexing is, but my impression was that at the max setting, it can be virtually up to date. The other thing, I have it set for max indexing and altho there are residents modules running for the indexing, I do not notice any slowdown, but I am running it on a pretty fast rig...

No, I am not affiliated with whoever markets Scopeware, just trying to be helpful for anyone needing an accurate and fast search tool... FYI, now that I have scopeware, I have dropped the time consuming (and sometimes futile) practice of attempting to maintain organized data/files/folders -- another time saver.

EDIT: via a Vivisimo search on keywords "scopeware vision free ", I did notice some hits that referenced how to get the free version of scopeware (even tho the site itself does not appear to offer that info...) and other sites that offered 15% discounts on the purchase of the personal edition. FYI, the free version does not allow indexing and searching on email and outlook data, just data files (I am still on the trial of the pro version, so I cannot verify any of this, but will try to edit back with the links to above mentioned sites...), plus the RSS feed feature is not available in the free version (which may or may not be a consideration, but it seems fairly valuable...).

EDIT: below is the link to the free version of scopeware, but not certain that it is viable; I also found links for the 15% discount but it would appear that has been phased out and is now only good for a tshirt, IF you tell 10 freinds about it...

http://www.scopeware.com/products/free_edition.html

 

I'm downloading a trial of it now.

It sounds similar to the Faster File Finder Indexer that I tried:
http://www.downseek.com/download/5297.asp

Of course, if you are using indexing anyway, why not use XP's indexer (I have to admit, though, that I used the Service Scheduler in NT Tools to start and stop the Indexing Service so that I had more control over when it ran)?

Cool Find and Effective File Search are also good, but why I don't use them now is a good question. Either too slow or I didn't want the indexing (too expensive, maybe?).

EDIT:[/b}
OK. I have to admit that ScopeWare is very fast. And the options about what to search, when to index, and the cataloging of files on the network are very nice. It seemed much faster than it actually was since by default it catalogs only Documents folders and email.

But, for simple fast file searching, XP's own indexing seems just as fast. And I also noticed that ScopeWare uses the XP Indexing Service to do its indexing.

 

Abraxas:

Never one to spend money when unnecessary, thought I would give your suggestions a try before laying out $30 for Scopeware, and had some trouble with FFFI, as the home site seems to no longer exist, and trying other avenues, like NoNags.com, I kept running into the following type of dead end message: "This title is no longer available! The program you've requested, "Faster Find File Indexer ", is not available for download at this time. You might try searching for this title at a later date…â€

XP's indexer "“ could find very little on that topic, and most of it had wording like dangerous and deficient with advice on how to turn it off. Interesting that scopeware uses it "“ I did see the "vision" entries under XP indexing. Wondering how you would use XP indexing without a component like scopeware "“ implies using a simple find after some kind of indexing process? Anyway, at this point, the scopeware interface and all of it’s innovative features appear to be the best way to go, for me…

Cool Find did not look all that cool, decided not to waste the time of trying it, as it did not appear to be nearly as powerful as scopeware and it costs more than scopeware…

Same thing with Effective File Search, except it is the same price, not more than scopeware. It just did not look to be anywhere near as cool as scopeware. Altho these other search tools (and some others that I have run across) look to be good basic tools, IMHO they just do not appear to measure up to scopeware. Anybody out there knows different, clue me in before my scopeware trial is up!