Robyn Rebollo is the Law Librarian for McGuire, Woods, Battle and Boothe LLP in McLean, VA.

(Archived January 15, 1999)

Is your PC or laptop cluttered with extra files that you don’t need? And what about the various files of information that you do need? Do you have trouble locating a relevant piece of information, whether it is an email message, that special GIF file, a word processing document or spreadsheet file?

If you’ve answered “yes” to the questions posed above, then Enfish Tracker Pro might just be the product you’re looking for. Published by Enfish Technology, Inc., a Pasadena based software company, Enfish Tracker Pro is designed to make your life a little easier by consolidating electronic information into headings that you create. Once you create a specific heading, Tracker Pro will search your hard drive, company Intranet and the Internet for all types of related files. For example, when I setup a heading called Top Technology Companies, Tracker Pro located all kinds of relevant files from email attachments, intranet links, marketing lists that I compiled in Word and direct links to Internet sources that provided top technology company lists or press releases on top technology companies. What’s nice about this product is that Tracker Pro has the ability to search your entire computer for files mentioning a specific subject term. It will actually search the content of your files. The FIND files or folders device on Windows 95 can’t successfully accomplish this feat.

Tracker Pro’s appearance is similar to other Internet browsing devices. Your tracker results list appears vertically on the left in a frame set with back and forward buttons available on the top of your screen. The frame set design lets you view an entire document while having access to the tracker’s results list. There are pull down menus that offer options to setup new tracker headings and create categories for the headings. You can create, change or delete items pretty easily. It has a great filtering feature where you can choose the types of documents (email, spreadsheets, graphic files, contacts, web pages and more) that you wish to see. Date restriction fields are also included through the filtering menu. Another impressive feature is Tracker Pro’s compatibility with other word processing software programs that are located on your laptop or PC. Tracker Pro’s File menu gives you the option of sending search results to others by email or electronic fax.

While I was impressed with Tracker Pro’s abilities, I would only recommend it for professionals who have an incredible amount of disorganized information on their computers/laptops. It’s also helpful to those who are involved in keeping abreast on many issues and events. Rather than jumping all over to each application to retrieve information on a particular topic, Tracker Pro keeps information organized in one easily accessible area. There is one significant problem with Tracker Pro. It’s a memory-hogging nightmare. It will run on 16 MB RAM, but 32 MB is recommended, with 64 MB being listed as optimal. Hard disk space is also required, which is approximately 50 MB of free space.

Enfish Technology, Inc. is currently offering a forty five day free trial download for those who would like test the product. The Enfish Tracker Pro download is available at http://www.enfish.com.