Stone Studio

Although Windows Vista / Windows 7  has a good desktop search software built in, I still find it too slow to work with, and the results are not as I expected most of the time. I will introduce two lighting fast program, they are Locate32, and my favourite: Everything. If you want to find a file by name, these are the best tool I found.

Locate32

Instead of taking 45 minutes to index what’s inside of all of your files, they take usually less than a few minutes indexing the names. Locate32 looks like the search app in Windows 95-2000, only it is much faster. Once you install it and run the database updater, the interface is fairly basic.

You can search by name, extension, or location. Clicking on one of the other two tabs will get you more advanced options such as minimum and maximum sizes, date modified (this is good for finding stuff that you’ve made or edited recently), match whole phrase, etc.

Locate32 might not be the best choice for the average user, but is great for the power searcher.

Everything

The name says it all – it searches everything. The indexing is fast, and I mean you blink and it’s done. Instead of the the GUI options that Locate has, things must be done with tags like a search engine, but for the most part works exactly like Locate. Except Everything will give you real time results as you type, like Yahoo! Desktop Search tool.

I’ve used Everything several times, not for full blown desktop search, but in a crisis where I need that file and I need it now!

Everything also has a portable version, for searching on the go.