What I’d like to see in Copernic Desktop Search
I’ve been using Copernic Desktop Search for several months now and I think it’s really a great program, especially as it is free. I’ve recently tried X1, to see if I’m missing anything, but I decided that for the steep price there’s not enough X1 can offer me. This is even more true for the new (beta) version 1.5 of CDS, where a lot of features have been added.
Although things have been extended a lot, there are still a lot of features that are restricted for no apparent reason. Here’s my list of things I’d like to see implemented/changed in CDS. In case anybody at Copernic reads this… personally, I’d be willing to pay a price for CDS, it doesn’t have to be free. I also have licenses for Agent Professional, Tracker and Summarizer. Just don’t make it as expensive as X1 
- Search overall. Why do I always have to specify first which kind of file I’m searching for?
- For Thunderbird, index at least all locally stored folders, including offline folders. I’m using Thunderbird with IMAP, and apart from several weirdly named folders (like “02c67ac5″), I can only select my RSS folders for indexing, nothing else. Some of my IMAP and news group folders are offline folders and could be indexed as such.
- For Outlook, index appointments and notes. I don’t use Outlook for mail or contacts, so that support is useless for me.
- Index favourites and history for more than one browser. Who uses just one browser these days? Why does there have to be a restriction to only one browser?
- Indexing of OneNote data. At least this could be added by a custom extractor (I have an upcoming post on that) in the future.
- Indexing of IMAP mail servers.
- Configuration for the allowance of system load. Currently I can’t influence when CDS thinks my system’s resources are highly used, and therefore stops indexing. There are often very many processes running on my system and CDS stops indexing much too often. Nevertheless, generally the Copernic implementation of unintrusive background indexing works great, compared with X1 again.
In case anybody at Copernic reads this…
Yes, we read lots of posts from Copernic users. Thanks for your feedback.
We’ll review your suggestions and try and work them into our product road map where appropriate.
David Burns
CEO - Copernic
Comment by david burns — 3/3/2005 @ 4:59 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
Noted you Copernic API work and wondered what you think about
ActiveWords enabling such a search tool.
We created a set of ActiveWords to automate Copernic Desktop Search
queries. The thought is that you already know what kind of file
or data point you are looking for so why not go directly from
your thought to the desired result.
You can download ActiveWords PLUS here:
http://www.activewords.com/plus_download.html
Then Open this file, click “Insert”, then trigger the ActiveWord
‘copernic’ for the list of search actions:
http://www.activewords.com/downloads/Special%20Downloads/Copernic.awb
Pete
Comment by Peter J. Weldon — 4/3/2005 @ 7:02 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
Pete, thanks for suggesting this. The funny thing is, I had downloaded ActiveWords just this morning to give it a try, and now you tell me about this additional binding. Works great, I must admit! I’d certainly suggest this to anybody who’s using both CDS and ActiveWords. Personally, I’ll have to do some trialling with ActiveWords before I make any decision… after all, the price for the Plus version (and how could a programmer live with anything less than that) is not too tiny…
Oliver
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 4/3/2005 @ 7:17 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
Well, of course I differ with you on the difference between price
and value. For an heavy computer user your 50 bucks to buy an
ActiveWords PLUS license is worth hours of time you can apply
to things more important than pointing and clicking, for the
rest of your life.
Pete
Comment by Peter J. Weldon — 4/3/2005 @ 7:22 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
Hey, I didn’t even say anything about a difference in price and value! I meant only that I’ll need some more time for evaluation, because a tool for 50 bucks, in my book, needs to be a very good tool.
Anticipating your next comment, I’m not saying ActiveWords is not a very good tool, only that I’m not completely sure of that yet.
Oliver
Comment by Oliver Sturm — 4/3/2005 @ 7:39 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
[…] le types, nothing more or less than that. I’d wish, and maybe I should at that to my list of things I’d like to see in CDS, they would extend that extensibility su […]
Pingback by Oliver Sturm’s weblog - An implementation of a Copernic Desktop Search Custom Extractor in C# — 12/3/2005 @ 1:40 pm - 3 years, 7 months ago
[…] leased. I’ve had a look at it to see if maybe some of my suggestions from my article What I’d like to see in Copernic Desktop Search have made it into the final ve […]
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