Sorry for the play on words there folks, but I just couldn't resist the Copernicus reference even if the name of the company is Copernic.  Anyway, Copernic Desktop Search is the newest entrant in the desktop/inbox search space, going head to head with the recently acquired (by Microsoft) Lookout.  this is a space thats heating up as I'm sure that Goolge and Yahoo are going to want to play here as well.

That said, based on my initial experience with Copernic and my previous experience with Lookout, I have to say that Copernic is a much stronger and well rounded application then Lookout.  From it's desktop and e-mail search engine to its integrated WEB search engine (currently, searches are executed at www.alltheweb.com), Copernic seems to have a definite leg up on Lookout.

The setup of Lookout went a little quicker than that of Copernic, however the Copernic configuration (at setup time) provides a bit more granularity in terms of what types of files and which locations get indexed.  One other thing that I found is that the setup application for Copernic appears to be a bit slower when adding or modifying folders to be indexed, but the actual indexing took more or less the same amount of time.

Once I got past the setup it became clear, at least to me, that Copernic has a leg up on the competition.  First off, Lookout is bound to Outlook as a DLL and has no desktop GUI.  In other words, if you want to search your desktop or e-mail, Outlook must be open.  Conversely, Copernic has toolbar plugin (much like Googles deskbar) as well as full Windows based GUI application, that allows you to search all indexed resources. 

Now, this may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but rather then having to open Outlook to search my hard drive or my e-mail, I happen to like the toolbar plugin as my information is only one click away.

Based on all of this it makes me wonder why Microsoft choose to by Lookout instead of Copernic.  Some food for thought.  Stay tuned for more on the personal search engine wars.