AvaFind 1.5

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AvaFind 1.5

Aalaap Ghag, Feb 13, 2005 0000 hrs IST

Disorganise your life

Extremely fast, always stays updated, supports wildcards, intelligent sorting

Doesn't index contents; Shareware and expensive too...

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From there on, you can do all the standard file actions on it, like you would with Windows Explorer. Drag and drop, cut and copy, right click context menus, and even extras such as copying the path, are available.

Prior to finding this, I used Cathy, which was a disk cataloging tool, to index my hard drive contents. But that was akin to using "locate", in that I had to run the Cathy updater every couple of hours just to keep the index updated. AvaFind has replaced Cathy in my computer as the search tool of my choice. But there is some thing more that I could ask from it. It has no desktop search-like facilities - it doesn't index the contents of the files, but just the names. So its only a boon to have if you created the files or you have some idea about a part of the filename (like DIVX or XVID). If you're looking for files that contain a specific word or phrase, AvaFind doesn't find it.

The other kvetch is the fact that it isn't free. AvaFind comes as a trial with which everything works for upto 30 days and then everything apart from the basic search just stops working. You may think thats okay, after all finding is the main thing, but ponder over this: no drag-and-drop, no cut/copy, no delete, and no context menus. Then what do you do with the results? You can't even copy the path into the clipboard, so basically it just tells you where the file is, and you have to go locate it yourself. Yeah, its easier when you know where to find something, but after AvaFinding for 30 days, trust me, it hurts to do things the old way! This shareware thing wouldn't have been a problem if the tool was considerately priced, say, around $15 or even Rs. 1000. But AvaFind is priced at a one-time $40 tag with no major updates (other than point releases) available, and another subscription option, where you pay $19.95 every year, where you get all updates. That's a little expensive, and considering there haven't been any major updates since May of 2003 (when version 1.5 was released), you really wonder if a yearly subscription is going to get you your money's worth.

This is when I'd like to introduce you to a worthy, free alternative: Locate (for Windows), a GUI powered version of the UNIX tool of the same name. It comes with its own updater, and lets you define when you want to run it and how often. The UI looks like the Pre-Win2000 search, like on Windows 9x/Me (when it was called Find), but everything works as expected: drag and drop, cut/copy, delete, and shell menus. The only thing missing is continuous updates a-la AvaFind's Scout Bot. But when it works, it works so good, that if it wasn't for the taste of AvaFind, it would be the best thing since stuffed crust pizza!

So should you stop AvaFinding and start Locating? AvaFind is brilliant for what it is. But its also a wee bit expensive. Locate on the other hand is free, and almost touches the bar raised by AvaFind. So go ahead and try out both AvaFind and Locate, and see if you can afford to spend $40 or live with relatively infrequent disk updates.

Click here to download AvaFind 1.5 (shareware).

Click here to download Locate 3.0 beta (freeware).