For those who'd like a first hand view of how "search engines" work, it is suggested that one can get "close up and personal" via the Google Desktop Search utility, or the competing Microsoft Desktop Search.

Early versions of Google Desktop Search raised some security questions, and with my immaculately crafted file structure I didn't feel it was needed so I've never tried it on my machine. (The security concerns reportedly have been addressed.)

Having progressed to where a full Windows Explorer search of "My Computer" for a file containing a single word takes a bit over 2 hours to run, I was tempted when I came across a glowing recommendation for the Microsoft Desktop Search, so I did download it (about 4 MB, 20 minutes on my dial-up connection).

As with Google, this utility works by going through all the stuff you want to be able to search, and making an "index" of what's on your machine. Once the index is made, only the index gets searched when you look for something. (Supposedly, the index is continually updated in background.) The default setting is to index your "My Documents" folder and your email. Since I don't keep anything in "My Documents," I changed the "preferences" to index my hard drives, excluding system files, and to index my email. (2 hard drives, 149.5 GB total used of 280 GB total available, 530 MB email)

It took just over four days to complete building its index.

Apparently it applied "indexing rules" somewhat like Google's, since trial searches were very fast, but did not find known files using my usual searches on known file content. (i.e., the indexes were far from complete).

On completion of its "index build" it installed itself in place of Windows Explorer Search, making my previous "full text search" for anything it didn't index impossible. (Once it's installed and indexed, you can only search the index.)

The interface was dazzling, with previews of everything (that it found) and it was remarkably fast; but since it disabled more thorough search …

It took 4.2 days to install and index.

It was on my machine for 4.8 days.

It might be more help to others with less "content" on their machines. It does uninstall (Control Panel) cleanly and quickly, so it's safe enough to give it a try. (It is only available for WinXP and Win2K, and you must have Outlook or Outlook express installed to get previews of email.)

Of course once we all have a TB of stuff on our machines, something of this sort will be necessary; but I'm not ready for it with my piddly 0.15 TB of data now.

John