Search US (Copernic 2000)

Member Name: pookie_rabbit

Product:	Copernic 2000
Date:	07/09/01 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great search tool

Disadvantages: Can do without, Great if you live in the States

OK so what ties together the biggest computer dabbler at my workplace and me wanting to win the Sunday Times travel competition? The Answer - Copernic.

Apart from enjoying the good things in life - beer, women, football, rugby, travel etc. I do find that money helps to fund the latter and for that reason I also manage to hold down a job as a computer systems engineer. Any my pet hate? Dabblers. These are the people who download all the rubbish they can find and then also stick on the contents of this month's latest PC magazine onto their work computer.

Anyway I went to see the biggest dabbler the other day - problem with his computer. We shall call him 'X'. X has installed pretty much everything on there. Bit by bit I told him to get it off. Until Copernic that is. He actually swore it was useful! Off!
Later that day I thought I better have a look at this Copernic. X wasn't normally that touchy.

Now some of us take searching for information on the web for granted. If I am looking for some information I will normally first do a quick google search from the shortcut bar on my Opera web browser. Maybe I will use Yahoo!
I also do a lot of searching of information in discussion groups - one of the best resources I find for computer related problem solving. To do this I know I have to do an advanced search in Yahoo and choose Usenet.
If I want to buy a book I know to try Amazon first and so on.
It would be useful for me however to look for all of this information under one roof and I dare say even more useful for a web newcomer.

This is where Copernic comes in. I guess you could call it an all in one search tool. It comes in three different flavours - the free downloadable version (actually 'advert wear' - ad's pop up on the screen), Plus and Pro. The latter are available at around $40 and $80 respectively and I will explain some of the extra features later.

Anyway after a short downl
oad and quick install I was ready to go. The only real question to answer during the install is whether you want it to integrate with Internet Explorer. If you choose to do so it replaces the default search feature and adds a Copernic icon to the toolbar. There does not seem to be any integration if you are an Opera or Netscape user.
I was ready to test out the software. Remember however if I wanted I could do all of the searches below but in different places.

Test one - this weeks Sunday Times "Where was I?" competition. In case you don't buy the Times this is a competition where you are given clues to answer two questions to win a holiday each week. Without the Internet I would never get a question right. I type a lot of the clues into search engines to piece them together. Normally I would do this with Google. Copernic by default searches a number of different engines including Google, Alta Vista and Lycos. You can also regionalize which search engines you want to use - for example more specific UK engines.

Result - this weeks answers are 1} Margate and 2} Birchington On Sea.
If this is wrong I am embarrassed but can blame Copernic!
Pass

Test two - To find some information on a problem I am having with Windows 2000 and ISDN.

Result - using the search newsgroups facility I find plenty of information. Normally I just search UseNet but Copernic also searches Cnet and Topica (which I had never heard of before).
Pass

Test three - Find the e-mail address of my mate bumming around somewhere in Israel

Result - I found him!. Copernic searches a number of engines that store mail addresses including Yahoo People Search and he came in at number 2.
Pass

Test four - Find a book. Just in case you don't know (and why should you) the name Pookie Rabbit comes from a line of old children's books. I have in the past received e-mails asking me if I know where to buy these books! N
ormally I would start searching with Amazon or similar bookstore. I tried putting 'pookie' into the search option.

Result - the good news or the bad news? OK good first - 50 matches. The bad news - Copernic only seems to search what I would call American book stores even if the Internet is a global economy. Whereas amazon.com is one of the searched stores amazon.co.uk isn't. The same holds true for the option to search for hardware and software purchases. I can't help feeling that this important option that could be regionalized stops Copernic being a really good product.
Pass in the US, Fail elsewhere

That is all the search facilities available in the 'free' version. The payable versions include amongst other things searching auction sites (again I would suspect US based), MP3 files and Encyclopaedias. I would imagine these extra features could be really useful.

At the end of the day then Copernic is a really useful tool if you do plenty of searching on the Internet. If you live in the U.S. it is even more useful. For the casual user however I dare say that using the search option in your Internet Explorer, Opera or whatever browser you use will be sufficient. If in doubt give it a go though - the download is not much bigger than a couple of MB.

Summary: