To give them the benefit of a doubt, I did have two or three requests to access the internet that seemed to pop up after I installed Scopeware and it's companion program NewsWatcher, but since they did not occur immediately after I attempted to use some function in the program which I realized might need internet access, and since the file name of the file requesting that access did not contain Scopeware or Vision, I told my firewall Zone Alarm to block access. Once I was familiar with how Scopeware Vision did find files on my computer I went into ZoneAlarm and removed all of the blocks, and tried additional Scopeware searches, but no requests were made for Internet Access. I did go into Scopeware and pulled over the RSS feeds and clicked on Update All,

and I did get a request from a program called mwtMonitor (no reference to Scopeware or Vision) for access to the internet and I granted it, and got

but it never got more than 0% completed, and there were no more requests for access through my firewall, so I don't know what to think. Scopeware should tell people what modules will require Internet Access so that firewall users (and any internet user should have a firewall) can know what they should permit access to.

Scopeware Vision does simplify the way users find information stored on their computers and shared network drives. A keyword search using Scopeware Vision presents a chronological stream of results with thumbnail pictures and file summary data. At a glance, users can "see the big picture" or gain a contextual view of the information of a related topic and focus on the information in a document or file they want to explore. One click launches a document in its native application.

Here is an interesting illustration from their website of the difference between searching the way we normally do, and searching the Scopeware way:

Click to enlarge The usual search returns lists. But what's here? To find out, you still have a lot of work to do. File finders find files, nothing more. Finding emails is a whole other story.   PCs have trained your brain to think like a disk drive or file cabinet. Why?

Click to enlarge Vision search results take the form of a stack of thumbnails. It's pretty easy to spot the stuff you're after. Vision finds email and just about everything: Office documents, PDFs, pictures, songs, contacts, tasks, web pages and more. Perhaps you'd rather not have to be so structured. So be it. Vision will organize your stuff for you even if you've never created a folder in your life.

As it is initially installed Scopeware searches the "My Documents" folder. I store most of my files elsewhere, therefore I do not have that many files in my "My Documents" folder so I was somewhat limited in what I could search for.

I did a search on refurbishing and found a solicitation letter I had sent out for HelpingTulsa, plus several other Word Processing and web page files with that word.

I did a search on tulsa computer society and found the entry form I filed with APCUG when we applied for the 2002 Jerry Award (we did not win that time, but we did win in 1999 and we won an honorable mention in 2001), plus several other Word Processing and web page files with that phrase.

I have a collection of Inspirational and Christian messages that I send to a number of my friends (if you want to be added to the list to receive 3 Inspirational and/or 1 Christian message each week send me an email). So I did a search on Jesus and found a lot of files.

I did some additional investigation of Scopeware and learned you can set Scopeware up to search other folders. Go to Tools, Settings, Folder Selection then click the + in front of My Computer, to see the drives on the computer, then the + in front of Drive D, to see a list of folders on that drive. If I want to include the ioport folder in Scopeware, click the box in front of "ioport"

I added several folders, and then did searches which should have found files in those folders, but it did not find anything. Apparently I needed to trigger it to reindex, but it was not immediately obvious how one triggers reindexing. Clicking Home certainly caused some motion in the lower right corner, which I would assume was reindexing, but when that finished it still did not find files in the referenced directories.

I checked with Scopeware on this, and they said "Once you select any additional folders to monitor, Vision will catalog the contents of this folder automatically. The timing of this depends on your "Indexing Performance" settings. If you have them set to "Lazy" the indexing will occur once you leave your PC inactive for a period of time. If you have the settings set to "Instant" the indexing should occur fairly quickly. You do not need to select the reindex option in the settings."

Clicking on Catalogs gives a flyout with an option for Settings

which pops up this screen, and it has a Reindex button, but it is greyed out.

Supposedly Scopeware searches email, but the only messages I can find in it are Spam Messages I have already deleted, and interestingly even though I emptied my Deleted Items folder in Outlook Express, they are still there in Scopeware. I can't seem to find any messages in any of my saved folders. I have used the Tools, Options, Maintenance Tab, Store Folder in Outlook Express to save my email on my D drive, rather than on C where Outlook Express normally puts it, but I even used the above Folder Selection procedure to point Scopeware at the folder containing my email folders, and it still did not seem to search the email. I checked with the people at Scopeware, and they said that Outlook Express encrypts its email folders (actually I believe what it does is compresses them), so Scopeware can't search anything but the Inbox; if one wants Scopeware to work with email they must switch to Outlook.

You can download a free 30 day trial of Scopeware. The personal version is $29.95; there is a professional version that goes beyond files on a local PC drive and includes a shared network drive, Outlook integration (contacts, calendar, etc) and V-Note to enter information directly into Scopeware.

For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here