Redmond Magazine: Brainware a Winner in Desktop Search; Google, the Loser
May 8, 2008
Redmond Magazine, an independent publication that tracks things Microsoft, featured a “bake off” among desktop search systems. The companies in the technology comparison are Brainware, dtSearch, Google Desktop Search, and Microsoft Windows Desktop Search. The winner? Brainware’s Globalbrain search technology based on patented technology. The company uses trigrams–three letter sequences–to identify relevant documents.
You can read the summary of the bake off here. These types of reports can disappear or become hard to find in a blink, so click quickly.
The most interesting part of the analysis is that Globalbrain scored lower on features, but beat the other vendors’ systems on documentation, ease of installation, ease of use, and administration. dtSearch, however, matched Globalbrain on installation ease. In my own tests of these systems, I found some of Globalbrain’s terminology confusing, particularly with regard to selecting specific collections to index and search. Obviously the Redmond Magazine team didn’t have any problem with terminology.
Another key finding was that the lowest-rated search system was Google Desktop Search. In our tests, Google fared near the top of the stack, but it lagged behind both Coveo and ISYS Search Software. These two vendors’ products were not included in the Redmond Magazine analysis.
Microsoft Windows Desktop Search scored only slightly better than Google. In our tests of Windows Desktop Search, we encountered odd latency when the system processed certain queries. Again, our experience seems to be at variance with the Redmond Magazine results.
Bottomline: Redmond Magazine flagged Brainware’s Globalbrain as the “winner”; Google, the vendor with the desktop search system that needs the most work. One tip: if you run a query on Live.com or Yahoo.com to locate Windows desktop search, make certain you get the desktop system, not the SharePoint Search Express system. Two different animals, and the Redmond Magazine test looked at the desktop version which does not require SharePoint.
Stephen Arnold, May 8, 2008
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One Response to “Redmond Magazine: Brainware a Winner in Desktop Search; Google, the Loser”
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For many years in IT I documented and kept more notes than anybody around me. After years of using the Dec/Vax search I developed my own Desktop Search. It does text search in context or matching lines only. With options like large font scrolling text and random search for a keyword. Then came pictures again with keyword search and display with large captions or not and random. Play pictures back at 1/10 second intervals. Full screen. Then came video and music. Pick a random video with “animal” in it then pick a random start point and play that video in slow motion for a preset number of seconds then freeze on the last frame for a few more seconds. Then the next. When you can sample your data like this. Then you can share it. Sampling reminds you what you have. Anyway nobody would beat me and my search in a head to head showdown. Nobody.