TheSearchMan definitely falls in the second category with its tiny size of 19 Kilobytes. The portable desktop search software program can be executed from any location of the Windows operating system. It provides a very basic search interface that allows users to select a folder and search term. The program will then display the search results in its interface with the possibility to open the containing folder or files directly from the search results.

One of the most important features of TheSearchMan is the ability to perform a second search that only searches within the search results to refine the search results again.

It is possible to use wildcards to replace one character (?) or multiple characters (*). The search is performed fast, probably not as fast as in search engines that make use of a database or other means of storing file information to increase search speed. It does usually take a few seconds to display the results which is perfectly acceptable for most uses.

TheSearchMan will not search within files. Users who do need that functionality might take a look at Locate32 which offers that. TheSearchMan on the other hand is a lightweight – most likely one of the smallest if not the smallest – desktop search application (50 KB unpacked) that can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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Like the name suggests it starts off by displaying everything – that is all files and folders – of a computer system. It eliminates all files and folders that do not match the search query of the user in the instant the key is pressed. What this means is that thousands of file names and folders will be displayed at the beginning, for example 1.5 million on a Windows XP test system.

Entering characters will reduce that amount drastically so that the required files and folders will be left in the end. To ensure that all files and folders have to be added to the index at start. It might take a minute or two depending on the amount of files. The developer mentions that indexing 1 million files will take around 1 minute. The index will be stored on the computer’s hard drive in the same location that the file was launched from. The one million indexed files and folders take up about 5 Megabytes of hard drive space.

The desktop search tool uses between 50 and 60 Megabytes of computer memory and about the same mount of virtual memory while running. The items can be sorted by name, path, data or size.

The search supports Boolean expressions, wildcards and regular expressions. The faq contains a helpful list of the expressions that can be used in the search.

Another interesting aspect of Everything is that it can launch an HTTP server so that users can search for and download files.

Everything will run on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista and can locate files and folders on local NTFS volumes.

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