After the disappointment of Google’s Desktop Search, I tried a few other search tools including Copernic Desktop. There’s a good round-up over here but I’m currently using Docco – it has a neat visualisation, written in Java using Lucene and can index pdf’s. It also doesn’t have any long running services to fight for the dwindling resources of my laptop. I’m still using Copernic on my desktop but I don’t have that much need for it.