SoftPerfect Network Search Engine Editor's Review

SoftPerfect Network Search Engine is a very useful Intranet search engine application.

I believe that anyone who works in an office knows how annoying is to search the entire Local Area Network for a specific file or folder. Especially when there are many computers sharing a large quantity of documents or other data. Using the windows 'Search' feature for such a task seems like a dead-end to me. And that's because when you need something, usually you need it as soon as possible.

Well, I must confess that this program solved solved my problem of endlessly looking for misplaced files or folders. After I installed it, I had to configure it, which was very easy due to the very intuitive graphical user interface. I logged in using my computer logon data (username and password), configured the ping methods for surrounding computers, started the file indexing process, chose the type of folders to be indexed and proceeded to an urgent file search. In case you get lost on the way of configuring your software, you can always check out the 'Quick Start' section.

Actually there are three ways of accessing the application's database: Using the in-built Web-server, simply type in your browser 'http://localhost/cgi-bin/netsearch.exe', ('localhost'= IP of the computer running the application) type in your search query, choose your options (file type, results per page, etc) and the application will scan the entire LAN for the desired file or folder.
You can also use a previously installed Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) or another third-party web-server that is capable of running CGI scripts. See the 'Quick Start' section for more information.

Pluses: Indexing of files on your LAN can be scheduled in order to keep an up-to-date list of the shared resources. There are options for choosing the file types to be indexed, cleanup the database, log operations and specify computers to be indexed. Searching for a file or folder is extremely easy and results come up unbelievably fast.

Drawbacks / flaws: The application doesn't index file content, so you can only search for filenames.

In conclusion: A must have application for any company.

version reviewed: 1.1