Analysis

I've just tried Omea Pro (build 353) and I've got to say it's very promising! It's hard to explain what Omea is... I think it can be viewed as two things:

1. A search tool that aggregates all data from your computer (all files types including PDF, Word, Excel but excluding PPT, Outlook emails, ICQ/Miranda conversations, Outlook Tasks, Outlook contacts, RSS/Atom feeds, Newsgroups, etc)
2. A productivity tool that you can use instead of all your different tools for managing all your incoming data (mails, files, feeds, newsgroups)

After using it for 2 days, here are the pros I have found:

• The searching feature is excellent. I find it much better than Google Desktop or Lookout in term of relevance, breadth of search and organizing the results

Here are the thing to improve I have noticed (please remember that it is beta software):

• It's resource hungry: after a few hours of using it, it easily reaches 300MB and more. It's also a little bit slow.
• It has not reached a level where it is at least as good as the tools it gets its data sources from. For example, it's not as good as Outlook, it's not as good as a dedicated RSS feed reader, etc. I believe it will never be able to be as good as those specialized tools. JetBrains has recognized this by trying to make it bi-directional data-wise (your changes from Omea are reflected in Outlook and vice-versa). However this doesn't work for Newsgroups and RSS feeds for example.

Now the real questions is how should I use it? As a search tool? But then it's a bit heavy to be left sitting idle on my desktop. And it's too heavy to start it on demand (it currently takes 30 seconds to 1 minute to start - I'm sure it'll be improved in the future). As a productivity tool? Possibly, although it's missing some of the features I use in my specialized tools. For example:

• I use the "Reading pane - Right" view of Outlook which gives me 3 vertical panes next to each other. Once you get used to this, it's hard to go back. I'm told this will be in the next version of Omea Pro.
• I use NewzCrawler which let me see only feeds which have unread items in them, feed by feed (I don't read all blogs at the same speed).

Conclusion

I currently don't think I'll be able to keep Omea open all the time as it's too heavy to have both Outlook and Omea open at the same time. Also, I don't like the fact that I have to stop using my favorite Feed reader (NewzCrawler). I really do not want to manage 2 feed tools and tell each one which feeds I have already read. Of course, I could simply not use the feed feature of Omea. However I feel that using Omea just for searching makes it loose a lot of its attraction. If I just want a search tool, I can use Goodle Desktop or Lookout (even if they are less powerful they are probably good enough for my daily needs).

I think the real challenge for JetBrains is to make the tool good enough in each domain (mail handling, feed reading, etc) so that it can be used instead of the dedicated tool. That means that you would use Omea for day to day activities and the specialized tool from time to time only when you need one of the power feature. Of course, this is a huge challenge for JetBrains and honestly I am not sure if it is achievable.

Anyway, the tools is promising and intriguing enough so that I'll follow the different builds to see how it evolves.

If you're using it, please drop me a note on how you use it and how you handle it vs the specialized tools. Thanks

Update 04/11/2004: I've just tried build 358 and I am extremely pleased to report that the memory consumption has decreased a lot: whereas it wasa before 300MB for me, it's now 140MB. Good job!