The Lookeen Search Review

February 1, 2016 John Obeto

Instant search results.

Just like that.

That is the holy grail of desktop search, and one that I have been searching for in what seems like, well, forever.

Now, I believe I have it in Lookeen Search.

I have been using Lookeen for about six weeks, and this use has been over several PCs, ranging from laptops and tablets to a couple of souped-up HP z640 workstations that each have about 7TB of local storage.

Installation
I went over to Lookeen.com for my copy of their eponymous application.

The download payload was small, installation on the first device – a Dell XPS 15 laptop – was fast and easy, and went off without a breeze. That install experience was consistent across all devices I tried Lookeen on.

Using Lookeen
I customized Lookeen to index the physical drives I wanted indexes, and let it go to work.

Lookeen is a desktop application which sports a pleasant, functional UI.

While it is bereft of bells-and-whistles, the UI is easily navigable, with needed controls exposed to users across a few tabs.

Even as indexing was going on, I was able to perform searches that presented results.

Once indexing was concluded, the presented results were accurate, refreshingly relevant, and speedily delivered.

I like that.

Conclusions
The readership of both The Interlocutor and this blog are quite aware of my travails with Windows Desktop Search.

I have the same issue with Cortana in Windows 10: the results are largely irrelevant, cannot be easily customized to exclude the web, and would rather be a jack-of-all-trades that perform fast, relevant searches.

Lookeen does not pretend to do anything else but search.

Again, I like that.

Pressing me search results before my attention wanders away is important.

For the ease of use, speed, and alright goodness of this application, we have presented Lookeen with the SmallBizWindows Business Ready Award of Excellence.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Eric Ebert for bringing Lookeen to my attention, which now allows me to stop pulling my hair out in annoyance with Windows Desktop Search!

Systems used

HP z640 Workstation
HP z440 Workstation
Dell XPS 15
HP ZBook 15 Mobile Workstation
HP EliteBook 1020
HP EliteBook 1040
HP ElitePad 1000

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