Enfish is different from the others in terms of usability. Users can
customize look and feel, personalize calendar, contacts, and weather views
aside from displaying search and file previews. Operating the program takes
time to learn, but the payoff is worth it. Enfish can open any item from a
single location, searching across all your hard drives, removable drives,
network drives, and the Internet. It can also search several file formats. Its
cross-referencing ability allows quick access to related information. The
Enfish Professional version is not free, but a 30-day free trial is
available from the website (www.enfish.com). Works with Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0
(Service Pack 3 or greater), 2000, and XP. Pentium 300MHz or higher, 256MB RAM,
and at least 30MB of free space in your hard drive.
ISYS Desktop 7.0
ISYS was developed for MS DOS applications in 1988, making it one of the
oldest desktop search engines. Law firms, government agencies, criminal
intelligence units, and large corporations use it. It can index not only your
computer but also a company’s computer network. Supporting 125 file formats,
ISYS can run under Windows 95/98/ME and Windows NT/2000/XP. The program uses
fuzzy logic to adjust for typographical errors in scanned documents and
corrects inconsistencies in date formats. ISYS is a versatile tool and supports
many e-mail clients including Eudora and Compuserve. Some drawbacks are the
need to learn and memorize search commands, and toolbar icons are difficult to
understand and do not have text descriptions. A powerful program, but it can be
more user-friendly. The latest version, ISYS Desktop 7.0, is not free. A
free 14-day trial version can be downloaded from the website (isysusa.com).
Wizetech Archivarius 3000 3.28
Reviewers describe its usability and efficiency as astonishing. Has a simple
graphics user interface design and organizes several features in a compact way.
Initial indexing time is fast and memory usage is relatively low. It can search
a wide array of e-mail applications. A unique feature allows it to act as a
small Web server so that remote users can search the computer through a web
browser; runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP. Its main drawback is its
inability to search media files or Web history. The shareware version is
available at www.softpile.com and is 4MB in size.