Description: DK Finder is a desktop search program that employs a sophisticated indexing algorithm to deliver lightning fast search results. It is primarily designed to find files on your system but can also search for keywords contained within files. The program can also perform a number of excellent file-related operations on search results that go beyond moving and copying to include group-operations, advanced filtering, and exporting results as a collection of shortcuts.

Searching for files on a computer is something that everyone needs (or needed at some point or another). Most people have used the search that comes with Windows which, unfortunately, is sub-par to say the least in terms of performance. Then there are programs such as Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search which, in my experience are resource hungry widget-engines in disguise that have the ulterior agenda of "integrating" your desktop with the internet - which might sound ok, until you find that the desktop search program has taken over your system. (Needless to say Google Desktop did not linger for a long time on my computer before I uninstalled it).

Alternately, I would venture to guess that 99% of most people’s desktop search needs revolve around finding files on a computer and filtering results quickly. If this is what you are after I present you with DK Finder, a small, lightning-fast, and powerful desktop search program with some nice features. Here are more notes on this program.

• The technology: DK Finder is an "indexing" search program that scans your hard drive(s), ’learns’ what’s there and stores it in an index. This means that you will need to perform periodical partial "smart reindexing" at times to keep it up to date.
• Filtering: is one of the strongest aspects of this program. A name filtering box allows you to specify multiple criteria simultaneously, including (/) and (-) for "or" and exclusion, respectively (see image to the right). You can also filter by size and date and/or by keywords inside the files themselves, and finally you can click the column headers to sort your results. Rather powerful and very cool.
• Performance: search results are almost instantaneous, however, the initial indexing when you first install the program will typically take a few minutes; subsequent reindexing, however (i.e updating the index) will typically take a few seconds (an average of approx 5 seconds on my machine, but this will vary). You can also run a full low-level indexing/re-indexing in the background.
• File operations: this is one of the most interesting aspects of this program. Aside from the usual copying/moving operations, DK Finder has the ability to create and save shortcut collections for marked files that can be saved into a folder.
• Where to search: because performing a search provides (almost) instantaneous results, narrowing in on a location for your search scope is done through the filtering function (see above). However, you can specify the folder locations on your hard drives which you might want excluded from the indexing process.
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Description: Desktop Media is a free program that can display shortcuts on the desktop to USB drives, CDs/DVDs and other media when you plug them in, and automatically removes these shortcuts when you unplug. It can also alternately create so-called "hard links" to your media instead of shortcuts.

[Update Jul 24, 2008] This program has gone through several changes as to warrant an updated review and a "Freewaregenius Pick" award!

This program is similar to the afore-mentioned "Desk Drive" in that it aims to provide the user with automatic shortcuts to their USB and other drives that appear and disappear from the desktop as the user plugs their media in and out. Shortly after posting the review for "Desk Drive" I received the following email from the author of this program, which pretty much sums it all: "I just saw your post on the Desk Drive application yesterday, and I thought it was a great idea ….. Unfortunately, I usually prefer not to install .NET apps, so I decided to write my own version of this… It also has a feature that Desk Drive does not, which is support for Symbolic Links via the Junction utility from SysInternals… Please let me know if you run into any bugs and I will be glad to fix them. This was a great idea for an application and I wanted to create an app with a small footprint to make it a little more appealing." This about sums it all up. Here are more notes on "Desktop Media":

• Supported media: optionally supports any or all of: removable drives, fixed drives, network/remote drives, CD/DVD drives and RAM disks. Also allows the exclusion of specific drive letters that you might want to opt out of displaying desktop shortcuts.
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Description: The KM Player is a free media player that supports a comprehensive range of media format, including broad DVD support using all internal filters and codecs. It is extremely feature-rich, offering a range of features such as applying filters during playback (sharpening, denoise, color effects, etc), excellent subtitles support, playing (and capturing) streaming media over the internet, playing incomplete files, bookmarking parts of videos, and others.

The KMPlayer (not to be confused with simply “KMPlayer”, which is another product) is the kind of free software that is so good it makes you wonder how anyone can still manage to charge money for a program in the same category. The reason I give it such a high endorsement is that software manages to juggle four things at once, each of which is remarkable in its own right:

1. Supports a very wide range of formats: (including obscure ones).It includes all essential decoders internally (including RealMedia, Flash video, and Quicktime) that are not registered to the system, but also interacts with system filters through a “fully controlled environment”. This means that The KM Player will (a) eliminate any possible errors due to codec conflict, (b) none of its internal filters will be running in the background at all times, taking up resources, and (c) If you have a media file that you cannot get to work this program will most certainly play it.
2. Has a very light footprint: takes up only 16 megs in memory and a (negligible) 50 megs on your hard drive.
3. Delivers an unusually rich selection of features: from those features that make you think “finally someone thought to include this” to “I can’t believe they thought of this”.
4. Delivers a simple and straightforward interface: despite all the supported features, everything is context-menu based, and the program can be used in a simple way without overwhelming the user with the diversity of options. On-screen tooltips are displayed on hovering over an element that tell you what it is.

This does not mean that this program is perfect but, in my view, is very close to it. There are a number of drawbacks which I will get into in my “wish list” section below. For now here is an overview of some of the features on offer:

• Formats supported: a listing would take a lot of space and would be superfluous. Suffice it to say: every conceivable video format (including DVD), audio format, playlist format, image format, and even disk image formats.
• Image processing: allows you to apply a wide range of effects to your video as it is being played, including color controls, (e.g. greyscale, auto-level control), sharpening, blurring, denoise, resize, flip/rotation, etc. Resize, flip, etc. Variable playback speed also supported.
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Description: Copy Handler is an open source program that resides in memory and significantly enhances the copying or moving of large files in Windows. It introduces the ability to pause and resume copy/move operations, can speed up transfers by up to 6-7 times, and adds filtering functions that determine exactly which files and folders to copy or move.

If you ever attempted to copy a large number of files and folders from one partition to another or across network or external drive(s), you might have run across a number of problems with the native windows copying function: the process can take a very long time, or it can ground to a halt for any minor reason, such as encountering a corrupt file, leaving you with the option to either try to fix the problem and re-do the copying operation (and hope for the best the second time around) or figure out which files/folders were copied and try to copy the ones that weren’t (which can be a very time consuming and precarious operation).

With a program like Copy Handler, on the other hand, the copying process is not interrupted by problematic, but moves on to the next file. Moreover, Copy Handler delivers full control over the copying process; not only does it allow the user to pause, resume, or stop the process at will, but it also introduces a “file basket” type functionality and file filters that can control which files to be copied. It also can result in significant speed increases in the transfer process. More info on this program below:

• Speed: the program can deliver varying transfer speed increases up to 6-7 times faster than Windows. One of the reasons for this is that it employs a non-parallel transfer queue rather than attempting to copy many files at once. Note: these figures are from the program page; I did not measure anything Myself.
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Description: Deluge is a full-featured open source bittorrent client that runs on multiple platforms. It is designed to be low on system resources utilization while providing powerful features and a user friendly experience.

I am not sure why, but I’ve been always looking for a good alternative to Azureus or µTorrent, admittedly the two most powerful Torrent clients. I have been using the Azureus-based BitTyrant (more on that one here), but have also had my eye out for some time on the open-source Deluge. And although I have previously tried multiple releases of the Windows version, they have always been somewhat unreliable and buggy; until this one: from the purely subjective experience of a single user I can report that this release (v.0.5.8.9) seems to be a very good, solid torrent client.

It is worth mentioning that as of the 0.5 release, Deluge was completely re-written from the earlier code and supports more features and better stability. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user experience: the interesting thing about this program is that it is very simple and “clean” looking, perfect for regular users who do not want to deal with a lot of complexity.
• Features: as of the 0.5 release Deluge supports encryption, peer exchange, binary prefix and UPnP, and a web UI that works on Firefox (didn’t try it - sorry). Other features include global as well as individual torrent upload/download limits, moving incomplete torrents on the local drive, enabling safe “blocklists” (Safepeer, Peerguadian, Emule), peer exchange, local peer discovery, private torrents, password protection, RSS, minimizing to tray, and other features which I either do not care to mention or do not understand.
• Technical comparison: for a technical features comparison with Azureus and µTorrent, click the thumbnail to the right (table adapted from Wikipedia’s torrent comparison article).
• Plugin architecture: makes this program (a) adaptable and easy to work with, and (b) quite powerful. Note that many of the features mentioned above might require activating the relevant plugins. At the time of this writing, all Deluge plugins were included in the installation package.
• Memory consumption: a mere 15 megs in memory. This is important given that Torrent clients typically reside in the background doing their thing while you work on other applications.
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