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An Entry from the Archives

David,

I now use Agent Ransack (free) to search my hard disk, and rely on Eudora's built-in email search (lame) for email, but I am always looking for something better.

I'd be grateful if you could report back in a month if you are still using X1. I used the beta version, Find, on my laptop for about 3 weeks but eventually uninstalled it -- it was too big. It sucked up CPU cycles, screen space and disk space (if I recall correctly, it created a close to 1 gig index file on my HD).

I'm still looking for alternatives.

Tim, I've been using X1 for at least 18 months. You can now turn off the continuous indexing, reducing its hunger for cycles; I have it update the index once a day, at night. The index does get rather big, but HD space is cheap these days. And it does load itself into memory so it can do its trick of narrowing results in real time as you type; I've argued with them that I find no advantage to that, but they really really like it.

I highly recommend this product. I've had it running for about 6 months now, after my dad recommended it to me. It's wonderful, and will change how you think about your information.

Gone are the days of extensive folder structures in Outlook (or your client of choice). Now, it doesn't matter where the message is, you can always find what you want in the same 2 seconds.

I use Outlook for work mail, and Eudora for personal POP mail. X1 indexes them both, an excellent feature. (Which program the mail comes from is a facet of information, so it's simple to limit your search if you need to.)

Nobody mentioned yet that it also indexes all attachments. It can natively display .doc, .xls and other files, and will find and highligh your query term within the attachment in addition to within the mail itself.

About 99% of the time I use it for email search, which alone earns it it's place on my computer. Sometime I use it to search all my computer's files, but I haven't really gotten in the habit of using it for Web or Contacts searching, two other tasks it supports.

Cheers
nate

It's the best thing. I've recommended it to everybody I know and work with. Find any emain in about 2 seconds.

Sounds similar to Simson Garfinkel's SBook, originally released for NeXTSTEP, and now available in MacOS X.

All I could find in a Google was lots of favorable mentions about X1 but no real links to where I can get it. Link please?

De link for X1 is http://www.x1.com/
Price: $99

(I've added the link to my original post.)

Too bad about the name though... What are the two rules of tech naming?

1. Be original (not like X10)
2. Be descriptive (... Not like X1)

Ah well. Maybe they'll rename now that they're getting more press.

I like Creo's Six Degrees [1] which apparently accomplishes much of the same functionality. I'll check out X1 though. Thanks for the lead!

[1] http://www2.creo.com/sixdegrees/

John

(David, I posted these comments in John Battelle's Searchblog as well.)

X1 (and, for that matter, Zoë) is a very good first-generation personal search engine -- an early entrant in a product category that I call Fisher.

I have put together some thoughts on Fisher as a product category in case anyone is interested. My main point is that these products are good enough to spark a discussion on what a Personal Search Engine should be.

Google has shown me I can have it all: fast, ranked search with a simple UI and a rich query language. Is it too much to ask for being able to have that kind of search for my personal data the way I can already search the public web?

I just wrote the X1 people to see if they had any academic discounts, and a nice guy wrote back to say that through the end of March the price is $49 instead of $99. Here the link to get the reduced price (which is the same as the old price):

http://www.x1.com/cart/?discount=FFP50

The guy encouraged me to spread this news around so as to promote X1.

I just downloaded X1 and already dissappointed. It's really not much of a program. It only works for the most common email programs - which I refuse to use, and the file finder is fast, but there are no options - multiple words - with OR NOT, AND etc. so complicated searchs are not possible. Then I tried to search for @word and it finds word and ignores the @ symbol - and found hundreds of files instead of the couple I need. I'll look for something better. Right now the seach engine in Wordperfect works better - and I think uses the same OutsideIn index technology. Word doesn't have as nice of an interface. Will still look for another program as a desktop search engine (I like the Google reference - Google for a PC would be great!)

Thanks for the comments, Steve. The current search syntax in X1 is actually Boolean-like. You can do AND searches simply by typing more than one word into the search field. You can also do NOT searches by putting a "-" before a word. So, if you wanted to find "Dog AND NOT Cat," you could type "dog -cat" into the search field. You can also look for exact strings, like "cat" and not "catatonic" by typing "cat=." OR and phrase will come soon, perhaps with the next beta, which will happen soon enough.

I don't understand the comparison to Word Perfect...I wish we could make this everything for everybody, but that would take little more time than we've had to date. We're working on it, though. Just a little more time...then X1 will work with every mailer...

Is it ok if I do some shameless self-promotion? FILEhand Search doesn't do email yet (but soon), but does search files, sorts results by relevance, allows phrases and AND/OR/NOT operators, and shows scrollable extracts, even for PDF and Word files. And it costs $39.

See if your think it's like "Google for the PC".

www.filehand.com.

Does anyone know of any personal search engine that I can use to spider/index from a starting URL? (Ideally with a way to identify custom index fields using a regex or a name.

We have some subscriptions at work to various paid content sources, but the companywide search engine is rather limited and underreliable.

Has anyone else tried Scopeware Vision, www.scopeware.com, for desktop search? It has a stream interface and allows you to save streams. You can also include RSS feeds in your searches with the integrated RSS reader. It is really useful for writing up research ... A free RSS reader is available at www.newswatcher.com.

Has anybody checked out Lookout from www.lookoutsoft.com? Seems better than X1 in some respects, and free (for now)!

I installed X1 yesterday. Searches are very fast but the email search interface leaves a lot to be desired. File search is not bad but apparently does not look at MS OneNote data files.

The annoying aspect of the interface is that that criteria fields should extend across the entire window rather than be truncated in the left panel, and the results could appear in a tree like hierarchy which would make them easier to navigate.

There does not appear a method of sorting results by results fields.

Nor does there appear to be any way to limit a search to a range such as >4/1/2004

Sounds similar to Simson Garfinkel's SBook, originally released for NeXTSTEP, and now available in MacOS X.

MiC

I need to know what the name of the Vonage jingle is any one know

Did anyone try the new X1 5.1 beta ?

Vonage is the worst phone system ever. We had installed it and had nothing but problems with dropped calls. It took 57 days to get the system disconnected and 37 days after they are still billing us.

I have never had such difficulty in working with a phone company. I would not, WOULD NOT recomend this service.

Please do your do dilligence before using this service.

If you think X1 is the best desktop search engine you have used, you haven't tried Gaviri PocketSearch.

Gaviri PocketSearch is by far the best desktop search engine available on the market.

Hi,
I'm thinking of again trying a Desktop Search Utility after previously using Google's and Microsoft's Desktop search tools. I uninstalled both as they hit my 3yr old laptops performance quite hard and also didn't always find files i knew existed.

I like the fact that you can determine when x1 indexes (i.e. through the night) but was wondering what sort of performance hit it gives your PC in comparison to Google and Microsoft's tools etc. Also what comparison is there between finding your files-can you get it to index C++ and SQL files etc?

cheers