Svizzer

This application offers more functionality than the standard Windows' Search tool, although its approach seems overly complex. Svizzer creates an index of user-specified directories to accelerate searches, but we found its build time to be longer compared to other indexing applications and it caused noticeable system sluggishness.

It does have a built-in scheduler, however, to keep your index up-to-date with minimal effort. Once the process is complete, you're faced with an unfriendly, multipaned window that doesn't lend itself to immediate usage. We were glad to find that you could customize the interface, removing or hiding some components to get a cleaner work space. Svizzer offers the standard search filters, including file type or date, but also lets you search your Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.

A Web Search tool lets you look up keywords on multiple online search engines, but it didn't always return results and the searches were much slower. Also flawed was the News Ticker, which failed to bring in headlines from any of the offered news sites in testing. Novices are better off sticking with the standard search tool, while more advanced users won't be impressed with Svizzer's design or features, despite its freeware status.