- File types
Winner: DocFetcher. Covers a LOT more file types and shows the text surrounding the search item. Critically for me, DocFetcher will index OpenOffice/LibreOffice files.
_ - File internals
Winner: DocFetcher. Shows the ENTIRE text and highlights the key search words
_ - Portability
Winner: Agent Ransack. Doesn't require Java.
_ - System Resources
Winner: Agent Ransack. Doesn't require Java and uses a *lot* fewer system resources. DocFetcher tends to use about 5-10% processor power for nothing as far as I can tell. DocFetcher also needs disk space to save it's indexes.
_ - Speed
Winner: Tie. These are fundamentally different search programs. Agent Ransack does live searches (checks the whole drive everytime) while DocFetcher does indexing (takes more time initially but gives instant results)
_ - License
Winner: DocFetcher. Open source while Ransack is freeware. If the company behind Ransack drops it, there's nothing to be done where DocFetcher could continue.
_ - Project activity level
Winner: DocFetcher. Their project usually releases once every 6-9 months and generally offers pretty dramatic upgrades, while Agent Ransack's changelog (http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/ ... -2862.html) appears to suggest it's mostly just getting bugfixes.
_ - Platform support
Winner: DocFetcher. Agent Ransack is Windows-only where DocFetcher works on OS X and Linux.
_ - Pro version
Winner: Unknown. DocFetcher doesn't have multiple versions and I didn't test the Agent Ransack pro version (FileLocator Pro).
_
Note:
- Although the Ransack home page http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack?fwd=ar says that it covers OpenOffice/Libreoffice files, I didn't find this to be true when testing build 762 on LibreOffice Writer files: http://i.imgur.com/jiv8qnr.png
I contacted the dev about it who indicated I needed to have the LibreOffice IFilter which comes with the installed version of LibreOffice.
