Copernic Desktop Search: Copernic's Search Technology Finds the Desktop Well-Designed Interface and Customization Capabilities Stand Out Joseph Moran
Interface
One of the best aspects of CDS is its top-notch user interface. Some desktop search tools, while powerful, blunt their usability with busy and sometimes confusing interfaces. The CDS interface, on the other hand, is so clean and well laid-out that it's hard to believe the software is free. You can launch it from an icon in the system tray or use the "Deskbar" (embedded in the Windows Taskbar) to save time.
In the CDS application itself, large and easy-to-read icons along the top let you select the broad category you want to search through (i.e. e-mail, files, pictures, etc). Each offers an area to refine your search with added parameters that are relevant to the category, including file size or date, From: or To: fields, subject line, and so forth. If a keyword search alone is sufficient, these advanced options can be hidden from view.
After you pick a search category and CDS has found information based on your search term (which seemingly occurs in the blink of an eye), the search tool displays links to other categories that had results (as well as how many) so that you can easily view those additional results. Items matching the search term are listed directly above a preview pane, which highlights each occurrence of the term.
Although the preview pane (which can be resized or removed) comes in handy, it does have a significant drawback. Specifically, it doesn't display content in its native, WYSIWYG format, so while a Word document viewed in the preview pane will retain basic text formatting like bold or italics, other characteristics of the document (graphic elements, for example) are not displayed. Similarly, previews of PowerPoint documents show the slide text but not the slide backgrounds.
Another weakness is that unlike most other utilities, CDS doesn't integrate desktop search with Web searching capabilities. This probably isn't all that surprising since Copernic doesn't offer a Web search engine of its own (although it does offer the popular standalone Web search tool Copernic Agent, which has to be used separately from Copernic Desktop Search). The end result is that if you want to also check for your search term on the Web you need to separately utilize of Copernic Agent or click the CDS Web button, which brings up an integrated browser pointing to Overture's AlltheWeb search page.
Unfortunately, doing so doesn't fill in the field with the term you were just looking for. You also can't access recently-used search terms on the Web search screen as you can in the other areas. Ultimately, the Web searching capability doesn't give you any real incentive to use it over a Google, Yahoo! or MSN, so many CDS users will likely prefer to conduct their Web searches separately.
Customization
A strong point of CDS is that it offers you a considerable amount of control over how the application looks and behaves. For starters, you can tweak exactly what data gets indexed and from where. You can specify in detail which data folders get indexed and the file types that will be included in the search results, and if you don't need (or want) to index a certain type of information, you can turn it off and even remove the related button from the menu.
To help users find their personal happy medium between comprehensive indexing and system performance, CDS indexes on the fly on Windows 2000/XP machines, and for Outlook users will even index incoming and outgoing e-mail as it's created. Otherwise, you can schedule indexing tasks to occur after a specified number of minutes, hours, or days.
The Bottom Line
Users seeking a desktop search utility have an ever-growing number of products to choose from, and Copernic Desktop Search should be on almost everyone's short list. If you like to search the Web concurrently with your desktop, than CDS likely won't be the best choice given the alternatives now available, but CDS's speed, broad file support, excellent interface, and ability to search networked data will make it an excellent choice for many.
