One of the best productivity tools I use is a desktop search. I have tries various incarnations of desktop search application including "Copernic", "Google Desktop Search", "X1", "Yahoo Desktop Search", and several more obscure desktop search applications.
I settled on Yahoo Desktop Search (YDS) as the best combination of value, performance, and features. YDS is based on the X1 desktop search, and is a free product. Unfortunately it was discontinued recently, but no fear, X1 has a free version of their X1 Desktop Search product, available only to previous YDS users. I cannot tell you what the difference between this free version and the paid X1 product is, but the free one has all that I need.
This free X1 Desktop Search can be found at either of the following links The first link will forward you to the second, but I have included both here in case one disappears.
http://desktop.yahoo.com
http://www.x1.com/yahoo/
X1 has the following options for scanning each folder on your file system:
- All Files
- File names and sizes, plus content for specified file types
- File names and sizes only
- Nothing
I Prefer to use the second option, which fives me all file names, and only the content of the files I specify. This means it will not scan all of my DLLs, Executables, video, audio, etc. X1 provides you with many default file types, including the MS Office file types, PDF, etc. As a developer, I have come up with the following additional file types which I want to be scanned for content. You can paste the following list into the specified extensions by:
- Open X1 Desktop Search
- Tools > Options
- Files
- More Indexing Options
- Specify Extensions
- Copy the following list into the input box
- Close
- OK
- OK
.ASAX,.ASCX,.ASMX,.ASP,.ASPX,.ATP,.C,.CONFIG,.CPP,.CS,.CSS,.CSV,.DBF,.DISCO,.DOC,
.GZ,.H,.HTM,.HTML,.JS,.LZA,.LZH,.MP3,.PDF,.PPT,.REG,.RTF,.SLN,.TAR,.TXT,.VB,.VBP,
.VBPROJ,.VBS,.VCPROJ,.WK1,.WK3,.WK4,.WP,.WPD,.XLS,.XML,.XSD,.XSL,.XSLT,.Z,.ZIP,.LOG,.PS1
Posted
May 18 2007, 10:09 PM
by
David