Search Engines for Your Computer

Back in the days of MS-DOS, long before Windows, there was an ingenious software called Magellan. In the days of DOS, you were restricted to eight letter file names (plus 3 additional letters on the right side of a dot). So, one had to be clever when saving files like letters or spreadsheets. A letter to your mother could be saved as "mom_let," but if you wrote her more than once, you could ad a date, like mom_let.215 or mom_215.let.

The point is you had to be clever, but remembering that file name a month later was difficult, especially if you have a bad memory like me. If you pulled up a list of file names, you really got confused as to what was what, as your clever coding confused its creator.

The advent of Magellan allowed you to attach a note to the file giving you a description of its contents. What a difference this program made, at least in my computing life! Finding files was made much easier.

Now, of course, you can have long file names, thanks to Windows. But, this innovation, along with others, has made us more productive, meaning we are doing more with our computers, thereby creating more files. Now, it is almost as difficult to find files as it was in the days of MS-DOS.

It stands to reason that since searching the vast territory of the Internet has become easy, thanks to search engines like Google, we should be able to apply those principles to finding data on our own computers. Until recently, few had addressed this problem.

Now, there are some good programs available to help you find your data. In recent posts here, I have talked about Google's Desktop Search and and Yahoo's Desktop Search. They are good programs, but, according to one reviewer, they are not the best.

According to CNet's Robert Vamosi, that honor belongs to a free program called "Copernic." This fine program allows you to search through all your files including e-mail's, contacts, graphics..,.plus all the usual files like word processing documents, spreadsheets, and just about all the other types of programs that creates your files.

It works like a search engine, where you put in the terms you are search for and Copernic finds that files that contains these terms. So, while finding letters to your Mom can be done without a search engine, finding the file where you described to her how you created a new recipe for chicken marinade is much easier with a program like Copernic.

I have only recently begun to use the program and found it very useful and easy. After you install the software, it wants to index all your files to make searches easier. It can take awhile (at least it did in my case), so I recommend you install the program before you go to bed and let it run during the night.

Vamosi also reviewed seven other files searchers in his excellent article, and I suggest you take a look at it. The good news is that seven of the eight programs reviewed, including Copernic, are absolutely free. You gotta love that!