File Details |
|
| File Size | 6.2 MB |
|---|---|
| License | Shareware, $40.00 |
| Operating System | Windows (All) |
| Date Added | November 11, 2024 |
| Total Downloads | 7,401 |
| Publisher | MeauxSoft |
| Homepage | Mo-Search |
Publisher's Description
Mo-Search places you in control of your computer's data, by quickly and easily locating files.
Indexed Desktop Search: Upon installation your computer is indexed (much like Google + Bing index the web). Thereafter AutoIndexer maintains your index by transparently incorporating new files, and updating modified files. This search Index is what sets Mo-Search apart. Blazing search speed is achieved inside million+ files, and results are ranked for relevance using a weighted average of multiple factors including Hits, HitsDensity, ModifiedFrequency and ModifiedDate.
Powerful and Accurate Searching: Simply find what you seek by typing a word (or phrase), and AutoSearch does the rest. Optionally filter by path, file name/extension, domain, modified date and/or file size.
Latest Reviews
jmmeaux reviewed v6.0.0 Alpha on Oct 7, 2015
I'm biased to Mo-Search for my needs. But I agree Archivarius is a good alternative that supports a very impressive number of file formats!!!
Unrelated - I want to comment on Mo-Search Indexing + Searching speed, and its evolution.
Mo-Search 3.x had a JET backend, and with 3 years of revisions + optimization it was slow. It worked fine if you had a limited amount of files to index/search, but otherwise not good. Really not good at all. Over time, this became a problem and led to...
Mo-Search 4.x switched the backend (database format) to SQLCE 3.5, which worked better. It scaled a lot better than 3.x, and improved slightly during 18 months of iterations, but still left a lot to be desired for larger amounts of files.
Mo-Search 5.x switched (again) to SQLCE 4.0. Also 5.x received a major architectural change of horizontal partitions (FullText index spread over 27 tables, instead of 1). Over the course of 3 years performance improved some more. But these iterations (up to 5.6.2) still hit a performance bottleneck for really large sets of files (including my 1+ million file test environment).
Mo-Search 6.x internally started as 5.6.3 (minor tweaks/fixes), but as development went along (and more feedback received) bigger changes/ improvements led to internal version 5.7 (also never released) mostly geared towards scalability. But as focus moved further to higher scale, and breaking the 4GB backend index barrier, the following major architectural changes coalesced. Items 1 and 2 improved performance; 3 and 4 were somewhat built on the new performance.
1) DataDeduplication - Can really improve indexing scalability in environments where duplicate files exist, such as software development with multiple branches. This works by de-duplicating index data (in RAM) during indexing, to reduce the amount of data written into the index. Then upon searching, very small/specific data subsets are re-duplicated into horizontally partitioned cache to facilitate proper ranking, combined filters, all the things the search UI provides. (Initially the goal was to perform search re-duplication purely in RAM, but complexity started to spiral - may possibly revisit in 7.x)
2) Database Sharding – Previously we’ve always had a single backend database file (3.x, 4.x, 5.x). Now it’s been split into 3, each holding different segments of the indexed data (and each of those horizontally partitioned). This allows us to break the 4GB index barrier (previous versions started performing poorly when the backend grew into the high 3GB range), and also improves performance regardless.
3) AutoSearch - In Simple Search mode (Just Text search box is visible), as you type... the results auto-populates (as does Google, and other tools including the very popular Locate32). This feature has been on the back burner for years, so its about time. Just a first rev, but still about time.
4) AutoComplete - in Advanced Search mode (Text search box, Filename search box, Path search box, etc, all visible), as you type... all relevant indexed data is used to AutoComplete. Previously only recent search terms were used to AutoComplete, and at most 400 recent terms. Now *ALL* indexed words, filenames, paths, are used in AutoComplete for the corresponding search box. If you have 1million files, that list is used to AutoComplete within the Filename search box. This feels a lot more productive to me, but... its a big change. (Like everything else - feedback is requested and hugely appreciated!!)
Internally, different versions of Mo-Search are re-tested to identify and track regressions (including indexing + searching performance). For a quick indexing performance comparison ran today on my 2011 Laptop (Intel SSD 320 + Core i7-2760). Here are the full index build durations:
4.0.13: 44 minutes (383k files, 1.52GB index, 132million words)
5.6.2: 21 minutes (383k files, 1.08GB index)
6.0.1: 12minutes (383k files, 681MB index)
And as the corpus size (volume of files) increases, older versions slow further at an increasing rate.
Your desktop/workstation/laptop and corpus (volume of files) will differ, and likely has different performance. But the points I'm trying to make: Performance matters. Usability matters. And so does constant work to keep moving forward.
Also, great comparative feedback on meauxsoft/Archivarius sites. Archivarius really makes meauxsoft.com look quite sad :-( I need to work on that.
Karol Mily reviewed v5.6.2 on Mar 18, 2015
Author does not offer much info on homepage.
Good alternative to try - Archivarius 3000 http://www.likasoft.com/index.shtml
jmmeaux reviewed v4.0.16 on Apr 30, 2012
Mo-Search *will* take longer to build the initial index because it indexes: file names AND file content too (Locate32 does NOT index file content). Once this initial index is built (33 minutes for me with 163,000 files/80 million words), the index is auto updated.
Locate32 works fine but doesn't search inside files, which is what I need daily.
@NyaR – how many Files & Words were indexed in those two hours? I bet a lot.
NyaR reviewed v4.0.16 on Apr 30, 2012
Thanks for making the app but it is unusable to me... nearly an hour to scan two terabytes of drives? Locate32 does this in minutes.
nona01 reviewed v4.0.14 on Feb 22, 2012
Mo-Search saved my life - or at least hours and hours of work. I've been doing a lot of revision of a lengthy academic paper and in cutting and pasting footnotes, I lost some of my original source documentation. Fortunately, I had saved a pre-revision copy and, with appropriate word choices, I was able to use Mo-Search to find the unedited footnotes in the unrevised manuscript to get me straightened out again in the revision document. I have lots and lots of Word files on my computer and I've found this program to be a tremendous help. You have to noodle around in it a bit to find all the features, but it's worth it. One hint I've found is that when you get ready to open a Word document (either file or folder), you can click on Mo-Search from that screen and search just that file or folder. It really is a terrific program. Thank you to the software writer for making it available.
bobad reviewed v4.0.13 on Jan 4, 2012
I have given up on my favorite search tool, "Everything", because it's out of development. I am auditioning every search tool I can find, but nothing is close to Everything so far.
This one is just awful. It got off on the wrong foot instantly when it tried to install into my personal Users folder structure. That's a no-no, and highly unprofessional. It took about 15 minutes for the initial indexing, and I have a very fast PC with SSD. When you type into the search box, it seems to freeze. The tool bar at the bottom pops up when it feels like it. I tell you, I couldn't uninstall this program fast enough! Because of the high ratings, I assume these things will be fixed, but that will not bring me back. I just don't like the whole GUI or the way it works period. It doesn't even have hypertext, which is instant in Everything. Uninstalling it left behind some junk registry entries, which Revo Uninstaller swatted. Still looking for a good search tool in current development!
nona01 reviewed v4.0.5 on Jul 18, 2011
This is a great search engine. The writer of the software has been updating and made changes that seem to have worked out the few minor kinks - auto indexing is now available, for one thing. The program has always been fast, but the indexing is now much faster. It's also gotten easier to use. I have thousands of Word files on my computer and when I am searching for one I cna't find, the program easily finds it for me, either through a single word search or combination of words. I can preview the document, scroll through it, and then, if it's the one I need, open it with a click. It's slick and reliable and has saved me many hours of fruitless labor trying to find the information I am looking for. Great program - and it's free. What more a person ask for?
gballanco reviewed v3.0 Beta on Feb 20, 2008
I've been using this programm since 2.0 and have appreciated all the updates. The program gets faster and better and now searches and ranks documents using mulitiple words. The re-indexing is quicker now, especially when updating, and the updating is very easy. I regularly use this and can't say enough good about how much time this program saves me in finding previously created legal documents lost in the bowels of my word files. I say Mo-Search saves the day.
qksusek reviewed v3.0 Beta on Jan 2, 2008
Very nice! Works well, easy to use and powerful. I give it a 5.
Blacklife08 reviewed v3.0 Beta on Jan 1, 2008
The program was fast and has a simple install however i found that it is faster to find a file myself sometimes than open a program and search for it. If there were a tool bar with a low cpu impact it would greatly improve the desirably of the program.
jmmeaux reviewed v6.0.0 Alpha on Oct 7, 2015
I'm biased to Mo-Search for my needs. But I agree Archivarius is a good alternative that supports a very impressive number of file formats!!!
Unrelated - I want to comment on Mo-Search Indexing + Searching speed, and its evolution.
Mo-Search 3.x had a JET backend, and with 3 years of revisions + optimization it was slow. It worked fine if you had a limited amount of files to index/search, but otherwise not good. Really not good at all. Over time, this became a problem and led to...
Mo-Search 4.x switched the backend (database format) to SQLCE 3.5, which worked better. It scaled a lot better than 3.x, and improved slightly during 18 months of iterations, but still left a lot to be desired for larger amounts of files.
Mo-Search 5.x switched (again) to SQLCE 4.0. Also 5.x received a major architectural change of horizontal partitions (FullText index spread over 27 tables, instead of 1). Over the course of 3 years performance improved some more. But these iterations (up to 5.6.2) still hit a performance bottleneck for really large sets of files (including my 1+ million file test environment).
Mo-Search 6.x internally started as 5.6.3 (minor tweaks/fixes), but as development went along (and more feedback received) bigger changes/ improvements led to internal version 5.7 (also never released) mostly geared towards scalability. But as focus moved further to higher scale, and breaking the 4GB backend index barrier, the following major architectural changes coalesced. Items 1 and 2 improved performance; 3 and 4 were somewhat built on the new performance.
1) DataDeduplication - Can really improve indexing scalability in environments where duplicate files exist, such as software development with multiple branches. This works by de-duplicating index data (in RAM) during indexing, to reduce the amount of data written into the index. Then upon searching, very small/specific data subsets are re-duplicated into horizontally partitioned cache to facilitate proper ranking, combined filters, all the things the search UI provides. (Initially the goal was to perform search re-duplication purely in RAM, but complexity started to spiral - may possibly revisit in 7.x)
2) Database Sharding – Previously we’ve always had a single backend database file (3.x, 4.x, 5.x). Now it’s been split into 3, each holding different segments of the indexed data (and each of those horizontally partitioned). This allows us to break the 4GB index barrier (previous versions started performing poorly when the backend grew into the high 3GB range), and also improves performance regardless.
3) AutoSearch - In Simple Search mode (Just Text search box is visible), as you type... the results auto-populates (as does Google, and other tools including the very popular Locate32). This feature has been on the back burner for years, so its about time. Just a first rev, but still about time.
4) AutoComplete - in Advanced Search mode (Text search box, Filename search box, Path search box, etc, all visible), as you type... all relevant indexed data is used to AutoComplete. Previously only recent search terms were used to AutoComplete, and at most 400 recent terms. Now *ALL* indexed words, filenames, paths, are used in AutoComplete for the corresponding search box. If you have 1million files, that list is used to AutoComplete within the Filename search box. This feels a lot more productive to me, but... its a big change. (Like everything else - feedback is requested and hugely appreciated!!)
Internally, different versions of Mo-Search are re-tested to identify and track regressions (including indexing + searching performance). For a quick indexing performance comparison ran today on my 2011 Laptop (Intel SSD 320 + Core i7-2760). Here are the full index build durations:
4.0.13: 44 minutes (383k files, 1.52GB index, 132million words)
5.6.2: 21 minutes (383k files, 1.08GB index)
6.0.1: 12minutes (383k files, 681MB index)
And as the corpus size (volume of files) increases, older versions slow further at an increasing rate.
Your desktop/workstation/laptop and corpus (volume of files) will differ, and likely has different performance. But the points I'm trying to make: Performance matters. Usability matters. And so does constant work to keep moving forward.
Also, great comparative feedback on meauxsoft/Archivarius sites. Archivarius really makes meauxsoft.com look quite sad :-( I need to work on that.
Karol Mily reviewed v5.6.2 on Mar 18, 2015
Author does not offer much info on homepage.
Good alternative to try - Archivarius 3000 http://www.likasoft.com/index.shtml
jmmeaux reviewed v4.0.16 on Apr 30, 2012
Mo-Search *will* take longer to build the initial index because it indexes: file names AND file content too (Locate32 does NOT index file content). Once this initial index is built (33 minutes for me with 163,000 files/80 million words), the index is auto updated.
Locate32 works fine but doesn't search inside files, which is what I need daily.
@NyaR – how many Files & Words were indexed in those two hours? I bet a lot.
NyaR reviewed v4.0.16 on Apr 30, 2012
Thanks for making the app but it is unusable to me... nearly an hour to scan two terabytes of drives? Locate32 does this in minutes.
nona01 reviewed v4.0.14 on Feb 22, 2012
Mo-Search saved my life - or at least hours and hours of work. I've been doing a lot of revision of a lengthy academic paper and in cutting and pasting footnotes, I lost some of my original source documentation. Fortunately, I had saved a pre-revision copy and, with appropriate word choices, I was able to use Mo-Search to find the unedited footnotes in the unrevised manuscript to get me straightened out again in the revision document. I have lots and lots of Word files on my computer and I've found this program to be a tremendous help. You have to noodle around in it a bit to find all the features, but it's worth it. One hint I've found is that when you get ready to open a Word document (either file or folder), you can click on Mo-Search from that screen and search just that file or folder. It really is a terrific program. Thank you to the software writer for making it available.
bobad reviewed v4.0.13 on Jan 4, 2012
I have given up on my favorite search tool, "Everything", because it's out of development. I am auditioning every search tool I can find, but nothing is close to Everything so far.
This one is just awful. It got off on the wrong foot instantly when it tried to install into my personal Users folder structure. That's a no-no, and highly unprofessional. It took about 15 minutes for the initial indexing, and I have a very fast PC with SSD. When you type into the search box, it seems to freeze. The tool bar at the bottom pops up when it feels like it. I tell you, I couldn't uninstall this program fast enough! Because of the high ratings, I assume these things will be fixed, but that will not bring me back. I just don't like the whole GUI or the way it works period. It doesn't even have hypertext, which is instant in Everything. Uninstalling it left behind some junk registry entries, which Revo Uninstaller swatted. Still looking for a good search tool in current development!
nona01 reviewed v4.0.5 on Jul 18, 2011
This is a great search engine. The writer of the software has been updating and made changes that seem to have worked out the few minor kinks - auto indexing is now available, for one thing. The program has always been fast, but the indexing is now much faster. It's also gotten easier to use. I have thousands of Word files on my computer and when I am searching for one I cna't find, the program easily finds it for me, either through a single word search or combination of words. I can preview the document, scroll through it, and then, if it's the one I need, open it with a click. It's slick and reliable and has saved me many hours of fruitless labor trying to find the information I am looking for. Great program - and it's free. What more a person ask for?
gballanco reviewed v3.0 Beta on Feb 20, 2008
I've been using this programm since 2.0 and have appreciated all the updates. The program gets faster and better and now searches and ranks documents using mulitiple words. The re-indexing is quicker now, especially when updating, and the updating is very easy. I regularly use this and can't say enough good about how much time this program saves me in finding previously created legal documents lost in the bowels of my word files. I say Mo-Search saves the day.
qksusek reviewed v3.0 Beta on Jan 2, 2008
Very nice! Works well, easy to use and powerful. I give it a 5.
Blacklife08 reviewed v3.0 Beta on Jan 1, 2008
The program was fast and has a simple install however i found that it is faster to find a file myself sometimes than open a program and search for it. If there were a tool bar with a low cpu impact it would greatly improve the desirably of the program.
jamomea reviewed v2.7.1 on Sep 29, 2007
Very good! Fast when both indexing and searching. And searching produces very relevant results. IMHO Mo-Search is better than google, copernic and microsoft desktop search. If I did not have this tool I would be much less productive. Check it out!
mememe reviewed v2.5.2 Beta on May 7, 2006
Really great program. It is freeware not shareware
gballanco reviewed v2.5.1 Beta on May 2, 2006
I highly recommend this excellent program. The search feature is fast, reliable and efficient and has saved a significant amount of time in my law practice on more than one occasion. The initial indexing takes a little time but after that, an updating of the index is fairly quick.