Ava Find: Making finding files easy and simple

Life was easy in the year 1999. I recount there were hardly 15000 files on my PC which had a measly 1.2 GB Hard drive. I could keep track of disk space consumption in my mind. There were like 300 songs and around 1000 wallpapers that hogged up the space. Finding files was easy and Windows OS Search Command made up for it.

Now? Times have changed. Got 150 Gigs on this computer… and around 3 Lakh files to manage. Files of all kinds… mostly useless but we no longer care for crap. We get bored, we format and start refresh. With internet holding everything imaginable possible, no general data is losable. And well, finding files on the computer has become a painful task. Without decent search available in Win OS out of the box, life can become a hell. That is a reason why the new File System that is expected to arrive with Microsoft Longhorn is so much in news. It is broadly aimed at making file management so easy that keeping track and searching files becomes easy. By managing the HDD file system as a database, there is no need for duplication of files at multiple locations and searching becomes as fast as searching on the internet using a search engine like Google. But that technology is still years away from our reach. So, what to do?

Microsoft did integrate an indexing service on its operating systems since I believe Windows 2000. It is buried deep inside advanced preferences in the search module. But I do not believe it is accessible from the normal search. Instead it is accessible from deep inside window’s indexing module in a pretty sad looking interface. If they had made that search user friendly, it would have made life easy for many considering it let you search files by looking for content! More on that later…

So, like always there is an alternative and a good one indeed. Like Opera M2’s find as you type search and Microsoft Outlook’s Lookout Search there is software that works for the entire operating system… I use Ava Find. Nice little software which resides in the system tray keeping track of all the new and old files in a custom database. It is a bit slow when it generates the database for the first time, but later on the updates are pretty darn fast. In fact, it keeps track of new files created in real time as you can see the newly added files in the Scout Bot box. It shows the result of the search keyword in real time with find as you type concept. Real awesome as things which generally takes minutes in Windows Search takes places in the snip of a finger.

The application also feature custom button to show the list of images, music and videos… letting you see all the files of these type in an instant. The only disadvantage is that you have to keep the application on all the time to really enjoy the instant gratification of searching your files. But considering the file system is not developed to be as flexible and the technology should be the part of the OS in the next update from Microsoft… This is a nice solution in the time being…

Still not as good as it could have been. It just searches for file names not the content inside them. Microsoft’s hidden search feature if was more user accessible would kill it in a snap. But it’s still something that is accessible, user friendly and fun! And people like fun things…