I’ve been in this position many times.  I know important information is somewhere on my computer, or is it?  And if it’s on my computer, is it in the form of a wordprocessing file or is it something I received or sent on an e-mail?  What’s the best way to find it?  Do I go to dozens of subdirectories, opening in reviewing hundreds of documents, or do I use the simplistic “Find” feature of Outlook, and watch the search results slowly trickle in?

I’ve read articles suggesting that many professionals spend more than five hours per week simply hunting down information that they know is on their own system.  I am sure that I spent several hours per week looking for such information. To say that it can be irritating is truly an understatement.

This constant frustration recently led me to a pleasant discovery, but it wasn’t obvious at first. I started looking at various shareware packages that claimed that they could track down your files based upon Boolean searches.  Many of them seemed promising, and I tried a few, but I really didn’t see anything that stood out, and I wasn’t inclined to try very many of these packages, since there is a learning curve associated with each of them.  Another option was to purchase an expensive package, such as Isys.  Then again, I really didn’t want to be spending several hundred dollars unless I had to.

I then discovered Windows Desktop Search, free to all who …