http://www.x1.com
 

What’s it do?

X1 is a tool that finds information on a computer in seconds, sorting through email messages, attachments, and files on a hard drive and narrowing/displaying results as fast as the user can type the search term


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1. Yes. It locates every file on your computer very, very quickly but not without a cost.

Reviewer 2. Yes, to a dizzying degree. It acts as a sort of focused search engine for the contents of your computer, locating files and emails amazingly fast.

Reviewer 3. It performs what it advertises quite well. The software actually creates an index of your system and once this indexing process is complete, the results are strikingly fast. During the indexing process however, you will notice a slight performance hit.

Reviewer 4. To quote from their web-site: X1 is a personal search engine for your computer that locates any word or words in any email message, attachment or file on your PC. It displays search results as you type your search, narrowing the results in real time with each letter typed and displaying the results in their native formats.To an extent, this is so. But you have to be using the usual cast of characters for it to be entirely true. I do not use Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora or Netscape Mail, so I am not able to search my email, email attachments or contacts. I can, however, search for information in many other files and file formats.

Reviewer 5. Yes it does, and it does it gracefully and with a degree of effectiveness I have seldom seen in PC application programs.

Reviewer 6. Yes. X1 provides very fast searches of email, attachments, files, and contacts, as promised.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1. Yes. The installation took less than two minutes even on a dial-up connection. There were no glitches. It was a very straightforward installation on all systems I tried. I am especially pleased that it offers a nice installation interface, allowing you to choose the options such as what icons you want to select and where you want them placed. Too many programs today just automatically place icons on my desktop—a practice to which I take great exception.

Reviewer 2. Yes, X1 installed easily.

Reviewer 3. It was extremely easy to install. During the installation process, the software selects its own directory, or you can select another folder or location.

Reviewer 4. No. Normally, software providers have either sent me a copy of the program on CD/diskette, or I have downloaded it to my computer, then proceeded with the installation. At first, X1 directed me to a Web site where I was to install the program directly from there onto my computer from the site. After several attempts had failed, the X1 support people set me up with a downloadable installation file. I still ran into some trouble, but their support people were able to detect the conflict, and the installation proceeded very smoothly after that. However, I do not like the direct-to-computer method. I can foresee a number of situations where I would prefer to have a copy of the software, on a drive or on a CD, without having to depend on a good Internet connection in order to install the programs I have bought. Examples: reformat my hard drive and reinstall all my important programs and utilities; upgrade to a new system, migrate from a desktop to a laptop, etc.

X1’s producer responded: If requested, we’re happy to provide users with a CD for installation.

Reviewer 5. Yes, very straightforward, with very considerate attention to keeping the user informed about what is coming next and what are the options.

Reviewer 6. Installation was a snap, a fairly standard Windows install.


Good Points

Reviewer 1. X1 is indeed to your personal computer what Google is to the Web. Once it has indexed your files (a lengthy and resource consuming process), it is remarkably fast—searching literally every word that exists on your hard drive, be it within a document or an email--and displaying the results in a search pane from which you can examine and make appropriate decisions as to whether to keep or delete. The search is highly configurable and supports more than 250 file types. This is what you only dreamed Windows Explorer could do! X1 provides an excellent tutorial at its site as well as interesting and very illuminating forums, and if that still does not answer all of your questions, the customer support is excellent! So, if you have a large hard drive and a short memory like this reviewer and have too often given up trying to find a single file in an ocean of gigabytes, X1 can and will find it for you.

Reviewer 2. Yes, very thorough. It dug up files I didn’t know were still on the hard drive, and found some I thought would be near impossible to locate.

Reviewer 3. You can set the indexing period to anything from a few minutes to every day at a specific time. The software actually will search for an in any email, file, attachment or contact on your computer. As you type in your search criteria, you can see the immediate results with each word highlighted. Simply double click on the file and it will open in its native format, which means that if you select a Word document, Word will open with that document. All results can be sorted by dates, file names, file types, etc. This is a strong feature if you have many files of the same type and need to review them quickly.

Reviewer 4. X1 does help to fill a need that many of us face. As our hard-drives become larger and we store more data for longer periods of time, it is certainly intelligent to allow the computer to help keep it organized. Or, at least, to index our own attempts at organization. You can define your access to the program. I like having it “docked” to the desktop (i.e. auto-hidden at the top of the screen: like the Taskbar, it will appear when the mouse pointer goes to the top of the screen), but you may prefer to use your own defined “hotkey” shortcut. In the next upgrade, it will also be available in the system tray. After installation, the program needs to build its index database. Depending on the amount of data you have, this could take a lot of time, so be prepared for that. In the options, you can then set when and how often you want the index to be refreshed, so that new data is included and old data is deleted. Searching for a particular file or specific information is very rapid. At first, all files are listed, but as you type, the list shrinks to display only those files containing all your keywords. You can also use symbols to insist on exact word matches. Once you have found the file you are looking for, you have a number of options. You can read it in the X1 View Pane, you can open it in its own format (e.g. Adobe Reader for .PDF files), you can print it, or you can delete it. Or you can tell X1 to go directly to the folder where the file is located on your drive. As noted above, I was unable to review X1’s functions for email or for contacts information. I like the range of support services they provide. There are only three buttons apart from the Find functions themselves: Help, Support and Options. Under support, there are: suggest a feature, report a bug, tell a friend (I don’t really need this), email customer service, and post in X1 forums. Usually, you have to be on a Web site to have these functions: I like being able to access them directly from the program itself. I always like browsing through forums provided by software companies, because there you find the interested users, the complainers, and those who just like helping others with their suggestions. I must emphasize that, although I did not like the installation procedure itself, the support staff was prompt and helpful. To me, support is a key issue. Good support will win loyal clients, and people will make many allowances for product weaknesses if they can get rapid and helpful support.

Reviewer 5. Super-fast performance, including searching concurrently as input arguments were keyed in. I found that it already had the search result narrowed down to the point where I could visually pick out the target well before I had completed even a full-phrase search-argument. It definitely lives up to its assertion: "Locate lost files, email messages, email attachments and MS Outlook Contact information as fast as you can type." Outstanding user-interface -- well-designed, simple and easy to use – clearly the work of someone with first hand knowledge/rapport with the application user's needs. Highlighting of 'found' search targets very well designed: they jump off the screen at you. The ability to click on a 'found' target attachment to open it in its own program, e.g., Word or Excel, was very useful and convenient. User-courtesy, e.g., Long indexing run coming!): letting the User know what was coming next and what his options were, was as exceptional as it is rare! Outstanding Documentation -- including an excellent online guided tour introduction -- sufficient for 90% of user education needs, a help file which in a few pages covered everything needed to use the program effectively, and a 60-page User's Guide that covered the whole waterfront. I have rarely seen documentation of this quality in the PC applications
world. Kudo's to your writer! -- or did the designer also do his own documentation? Generous upgrade policy -- all upgrades free for one year following purchase. I was pleasantly surprised that X1 required only 30 to 35 minutes of 'background-processing time to index my very-loaded (nearly 300K files) machine -- definitely faster than expected.

Reviewer 6. Speed – Once the initial indexes are built, X1 is very fast in finding items. User Control – X1 allows several different ways to schedule index updates. Compatibility – X1 works with email clients other than just the Microsoft big 2 (Outlook and Outlook Express) It works well with Eudora and has the option to work with Netscape’s email client, though I did not test this. In-Program Viewer – X1 has a built in file viewer that can handle most email and multimedia files. It can also give detailed properties for files such as .exe and .dll files. Search Flexibility – X1 gives the user the ability to do a general search in each of the categories, or to be more specific by searching in any of the listed columns. For example, it’s easy to type a date into the date column when on the email tab to see all email for that date.


Weak Points

Reviewer 1. While X1 does what it claims, it is not without its costs. This program is really an inexcusable resource hog! Anyone with strained system resources or an older and less powerful machine may want to stay away. During its indexing process, X1 managed to claim 55MB of RAM. In addition, on start-up my processor went to 100%, my cooling fan immediately went to high speed, and for some unknown reason my network was accessed. The same thing occurred at exit of the program. I was running the program on a Pentium 4 with 3.0G and with 1GB RAM. Even so, my computer noticeably slowed down. When I tested the software on an older non-Pentium machine with 128MB of RAM, my screen froze up twice. Unless I disabled my virus scan, my resources dropped so low as to make the computer unstable. This is a serious problem and one I hope the developers will look into as it does limit the number of people who can reasonably use the software (and keep people like me who are stingy about their computer resources from using the software). And while cheaper than the $200.00 for comparable programs (dtSearch and Enfish), I still feel that price is a bit steep at $99.00. This does take many potential customers out of the market. It seems more in the $49.95 range possibly. Finally, there are a few items which I would suggest might be included and/or addressed as the software continues in development: it needs to support Boolean searching, needs to auto update or offer an update checker, a Delete as a right click menu option, and contacts indexing for other than just Outlook. There are some glitches with X1 creating duplicate files—especially when moving email messages manually from Inbox to another PST (files remain in the inbox resulting in two entries in the index).

Reviewer 2. I had no problems with this program, except that it was sometimes overwhelming in the amount of information it presented. It also would not work with a third-party email program I often use, Incredimail. As well, it only searches contact lists for Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Netscape Mail. If you use a different mail client, you’re out of luck for now. It searches for keywords only, not phrases, so that can slow you down a bit. Also, unless you give your image files specific names, you’ll have trouble locating them. This is not the fault of the program, as it is excellent at searching for keywords and file names.

Reviewer 3. Boolean operations – this is an excerpt from the on-line help: Can X1 do Boolean searches? Yes and no. You can do "AND" searches simply by typing more than one word into the search field. You can also do "NOT" searches by putting a "-" before a word. (i.e.: if you wanted to find "Dog NOT Cat", you could write "dog -cat" into the search field.) However, X1 does not perform "OR" searches at this time, although it is a feature that we hope to provide in the future. At this time the application does not support an international character set, but I understand this will be in a future release. For now one may see a series of ????? which represents an unknown file in an international character set.

Reviewer 4. I will not belabor any more my dislike of the installation procedure. I have found that the indexing process does take a lot of computing power. I would expect this for the first indexing pass. But recently I have had my machine slow down to a virtual standstill, and when I was finally able to track down the reason, it was X1 updating its index. Indexing is supposed to drop to the background if you need your CPU for other functions, but that does not seem to be my case. However, this issue, among others, is discussed by different users on the forums. X1 is expensive. Perhaps in the corporate world it is cost-effective, but as an individual user, it is out of my range.

Reviewer 5. The price of $99 out-of-sight, two or three times more than the functionality justifies or the competition will permit. A competitor, SleuthHound! Pro, priced at $34.95, has not exactly the same but roughly equal functionality and a much richer repertoire of Boolean search argument expressions. I expect numerous other programs of comparable functionality could be identified that are priced between $20-$40. I really would like to see X1 survive in the marketplace, but to do so they need to do some price-comparison homework soon, and adjust their price accordingly. I'd bet that they' will find far more competitors priced under $25 than those over $50. I very much doubt they'll be able to distinguish themselves by extra functionality. Technical support is only via email, and no turn around time is given; however, I did find the Tech Support replies in the user forum knowledgeably written, quite helpful, and with good response-time. Trial use period limit of 15 days is underwhelming, although to their credit it the trial X1 is full function. This just isn't long enough to put a new unfamiliar program thru its paces, especially one that's asking a price this high. I'd recommend 30-60 days unless the price is significantly reduced, but even then not less than 30days, which is the minimum expected in the industry. I found it hard -- in fact, very hard -- to navigate the Website dialogue to order (download) the program.

Reviewer 6. In my use of the program, I didn’t find anything I could call weak. I suppose if you were using a slower machine, the default indexing might take a toll on usability. This could be offset by scheduling the indexing to take place in off-peak hours, but that would leave you with less than current indexes during the time you search. But on a fairly fast machine the indexing was nearly transparent.


Other Comments

Reviewer 1. The following comment may or may not be of importance to every user and does not affect the overall value of the product. On my systems, I am running AdAware, Spybot S&D, Spyguard, and Spyware Blaster. Spyware Blaster is a program which, among other things, prevents downloads if they are found to be “spyware,“ i.e., Active X or cookies. X1.com is listed on their “block list” due to its installation of “cookies” on your computer. (In fairness, I must add that AdAware, which also will flag “tracking cookies,” did not flag this software.) As I am somewhat paranoid I guess and like to keep a very clean computer. I disallow all cookies or other such tracking items until I am notified and can make a decision as to whether I want to allow or disallow. I resent it when things are placed on my computer without my knowledge and therefore choice! So to X1 Technologies I say shame on you for not making it known in advance that you are installing cookies with your software. For this reviewer, this is a big negative!

X1’s Producer responded: I had a very extensive conversation with our development team regarding this. The short answer to this is that anything cookie-related is likely due to visiting the Web site (which uses cookies), and not the X1 client.

Reviewer 2. X1 really turned out to be an impressive program, and once you get used to dealing with the piles of information it digs up, it is a valuable tool

Reviewer 3. This program will also search for, and in compressed files as well as what is mentioned above. One can also search within specific files for specific phrases. If you use 2 or more words then each of the words will be highlighted in a different color making a quick visual review very easy.

Reviewer 4. Generally, this program works very well. Unfortunately for me, it is limited only to the “Files” portion of the program. However, within this limitation, it does provide access to the files I normally use, including, to my pleasure, the documents produced by Sun’s Star Office. To find out which products that are going to be included in upcoming version of the program, you can visit the General Discussion forum, and look at the first item: X1 Feature Request List

Reviewer 5. I'd strongly recommend an X1 Website link button on the user’s interface screen; presently the user has to find it via the Options|About sequence, another impediment to ordering. X1’s Producer responded: Users of the 15-day trial version have a big, orange “buy x1 now” button at the bottom of their screen. This obviously goes away when the product is registered. Additional information, e.g., program version, registration date, names of team members(?) should be put on the registration tab, not just the fact the program has been registered. X1’s Producer responded: This information can be found in the “about” tab in the options menu. I found x1's Website Management Team Introduction page, with pictures and substantial biographies of the principals, a very friendly and appealing touch.

Reviewer 6. I’ve never been fond of these types of search utilities because of the performance hit they impose on a computer. X1 is the first that I’ve tried that did not seem to bog the machine down while processing its indexes.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1. No. Not because of a cookie or two but simply because its footprint is too big. I don’t “give away” 55MB of RAM and so much resource to non-essential software.

Reviewer 2. Yes.

Reviewer 3. I have 2, 80 gigs drives and I am constantly forgetting where I put this file or that JPG. This product now allows me to instantly search for, locate and open what I thought I had lost. Yes, I will definitely continue to use X1 Search.

Reviewer 4. Yes, although I will continue to look at the competition to see if my email and my contacts can also be included.

Reviewer 5. Yes. I definitely prefer its user interface over SleuthHound! Pro's.

Reviewer 6. Yes.

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