JEAN-PIERRE GATTUSO  Foxtrot is a great program which I have used for a long time. However, there is NO technical support. Every time I have a question or a request, it takes several reminders to get a reply. Sometimes, there is no reply at all.

This is appalling and I have enough. I have purchased HoudahSpot, which may be a product inferior to Foxtrot but its support is reported to be outstanding.

Jean-Pierre  
(Version 2.5.3)

SUPERGLIDE  This app is awesome. I was on deadline to submit a grant proposal and couldn't for the life of me find a document containing pertinent information. Fortunately for me, I had a trial version of FoxTrot Personal Search (FPS) still active, so I fired it up. Upon first starting the app you are given a choice which folder on your hard drive you want to index. The index building process takes several minutes depending on the number of records it has to process. The index created makes for very fast searches using key word(s). The FPS uses normal boolean logic and wildcards. Well, when I typed in the search box the phrase "united way" that I so desperately needed to find, bam, a list of records (rtf, doc, pdf, etc.) popped up with all occurrences found in the folder selected to index. A separate viewer below this list shows a preview of the record with the phrase "united way" in bold and highlighted. There's also another window on the side that allows you to further drill down. For example, there's a section with a slider you use to narrow the date range to search. A second section shows the location(s) where the records were found (folders and subfolders on your hard drive) and the number of items found containing the key word(s) or phrase. You can also see in a third section the file type found (e.g., pdf, word processor, plain text, mail message, etc.) with the total number found. Within a few seconds I found the phrase I was looking for in a mail message from a colleague. That made my day and allowed me to complete the proposal on time. I immediately and gladly bought a license. There's more power under the hood (in Preferences) where you can add additional folders to include in the index (like User/Library/Mail for email searches), but it's not a good idea to index the entire hard drive because that will increase the size of the index file and slow down searches. Moreover, you can exclude certain folders (like a Backup folder) which will reduce redundancy and speed up the search function. I'm thrilled and highly recommend FPS if you have thousands of documents and/or email messages you need to regularly search for arcane data that you couldn't possibly keep straight in your head.  
(Version 2.5.3)

AJOE  Wow, this is an amazing application. I have been looking for a fast local search tool that provides live previews and FoxTrot does the trick.

I often have to search thousands of pages of developer references to find answers and this is the only search program I have found that is worth keeping open on my desktop.

Using FoxTrot 2 on Mac OS X 10.5.4 (Intel)  
(Version 2.0.2)

LEV  The new FoxTrot Professional beta is promising, although at €99 it's pretty steeply priced. BUT... it can't index Mail.app emails. Just ignores them. And if you index them with FoxTrot 1.5 and then upgrade the index (automatically) to 2.0 beta, it's unable to preview them, which rather kills the point.

Hopefully this is a beta bug. If not, it obliterates FoxTrot, which would be a shame.

I'd have filed a bug reported, but their website -- perhaps the worst developer's site I've ever seen, so bad it makes me want to demolish the internet -- has no means of doing so. Perhaps they just don't want to know bad news. Perhaps it's some Swiss secrecy thing. Who knows?

The skinny: stick with 1.5 for the time being.  
(Version 2.0b3)

MACMARIA  It's been now more than three months using FT. I must say I'm very happy with it. It has been very stable, including the indexing process. I really love its capability of searching inside packages. That makes all the difference.

My only cons is the price. It's a bit pricey, however it was the only app that did all that I wanted/needed...  
(Version 1.5)

MACMARIA  I have to say that I don't agree with Anon Bud at all.

I knew of FoxTrot for the first time in a user's forum of a different application (DEVONthink). Someone said it made an amazing job on searching files and contents, including metadata. (For instance, it finds pdf contents that are inside a DEVONthink database without it being open.) Since I don't like Spotlight capacities (or lack of them) I decided to give it a try.

Version 1.1 indeed made a fine job on searching (and indexing). Its capacities are great. However, it crashed from time to time. So, while on trial mode, I reported this to the developers. They were fast and very competent on their reply. More so for two weeks they asked me to try several builds and report the crash logs to them.

I got today a final build (already on 1.2) made specially for me. I'm thinking: "Wow! These people really care about users. Even when they are still trying their application."

It has not crashed so far. I'll give it some more use and if the great behaviour continues, I'll buy it. Then I'll make my review here.

I must say that on terms of support I can already give this application *5 stars.* I wish all developers would behave like them. :)  
(Version 1.2)

ANON BUD  This is my final two words on FoxTrot: Doesn’t work.

After some bugginess reported earlier and fixed, or so I thought. This latest version brings back the buginess. Indexing takes forever; updating the index takes forever; and then, it can’t even find what I am searching for. What Spotlight was able to find in less than five seconds...Foxtrot worked on for over ten minutes. I got tired of waiting and quit the app.

Now I’m going to trash it and consider that my money has just gone down the drain!  
(Version 1.2)

ANON BUD  Well, the developer did respond about some erratic behavior I‘d been having. Things are working now.

I like that I can have a real time view into the docs I’ve searched and plug-ins from various apps really helps this (i.e. Mellel, VooDooPad, etc.)

I’m upgrading the rating a bit, but just hope that all bad behavior has stopped.....  
(Version 1.1)

ANON BUD  Been using for about a year and when it’s working, it’s great.

After a crash while updating the index, I have not been able to get it to working again. I just keep getting the spinning beachball and have to force quit!

Due to this erratic behavior, I cannot recommend the purchase.  
(Version 1.1)

SHERMAN  Incredibly powerful and useful. If you're thinking "Yeah, I have Spotlight, and it was free" then think again. FoxTrot is instantaneous. It lets you do those good boolean searches that Spotlight makes impossible to do (or to remember how to do). I can't believe how fast it finds Mail messages, and then shows me the subject line, mailbox location, and the full text of the message in preview.

One drawback -- it doesn't automatically keep the index up to date. Hope that gets added soon!  
(Version 1.0.9)