FIND FILES FAST.

This article reviews several computer software designed for searching data files. DtSearch Desktop With Spider is easy to use, even with its wealth of tools. Installation, indexing and search all went off without a hitch. Knownsoft Turbo Searcher tool indexes only by drive, including network drives. It can search for images, videos, music files and other content categories, but default options are limited. Users can manually add other formats to its index. Stata Labs Bloomba Professional is an e-mail tool which imports Outlook data seamlessly. It works as an Outlook replacement. It automatically saves a user's last 20 searches and lets him scroll through their results with a single click. The Professional version syncs with Palm personal digital assistants. Blinkx's keyword function works surprisingly well. Searches are fast and simple, but not especially accurate. Blinkx could make a useful research tool. The program can also perform an old-fashioned keyword search of files in the same locations. With XI Search from XI Technologies, users can search by file name and size or by file extension. Other options let users specify the maximum file size for content indexing, which applies to e-mail attachments as well.