GO FETCH!

A Review of Go Get It!

by Ron Enderland

So you’re sick and tired of watching that little modem icon in your Start Menu tray glow green while you patiently wait for those URL’s to download, huh? You’re weary of getting a glom of graphics when all you really want is good old information, huh? You’ve had it with typing in a series of words in a search engine and getting 104,367 matches, huh?

Well, have I got a program for you. Go-Get-It may just be what you’ve been waiting for.

The premise behind Go-Get-It is that you have better things to do than manually hitting links and then sitting around waiting for info to download. This handy-dandy little app handles such mundane chores for you. And, I might add, it does so quite nicely.

One of your search options is “Keyword Search.” You are prompted to select any or all of three search engines: Lycos, Alta Vista, and Yahoo. These are a fair representation of search sites, although there are several other excellent ones that are left out. Perhaps Nortech will provide optional engine choices for those of you who insist on Web Crawler or Infoseek.

The way the program operates, though, you’re not aware of the search site itself. You simply get the results.

The results arrive in the form of documents which download to your hard drive. As a result, you can send Go-Get-It after keywords, individual pages, entire sites, and/or the links which tie to the pages that you’ve downloaded.

“How do they do that?” you may ask. Well, the answer is “astonishingly fast!” Really, it’s no secret, though.

You see, Go-Get-It retrieves text only, no graphics. The descriptions of the graphics (and their layout, if encoded into the page’s HTML) appear on the pages that you retrieve.

Once you have downloaded the requested documents, you can check them out (off-line, if you like) through the built-in viewer. If you’ve downloaded a site, then you can just hit links to jump from page to page. You can copy text and URL locations with the viewer, although the Windows hot keys don’t work. You’ll have to hit the copy buttons on the toolbar.

You can also set up your own personal newspaper through “Updates.” You can set Go-Get-It up to retrieve certain web pages and store them in your update folder. When you instruct it to “Retrieve Updates,” then it will go out and look at the pages and download them if they’ve changed. In this manner, you can have a folder full of fresh documents to look at your leisure. Keep in mind, though, that you won’t get the graphics.

Go-Get-It seems to do what Nortech claims, and it does it well. My folders were quickly filled with pages, even with my rickety old 14,400 modem. It will compact the folders for you, too, so that hard drive space doesn’t vanish too quickly. Incidentally, Go-Get-It itself requires a paltry 1.5 MEG of space for installation.

It will also search the USENET groups, if you like. You can narrow the search down to certain groups, individuals who posted, or subjects. It fires up and runs smoothly on TCP/IP as well as on AOL 3.0. It supposedly also works on MSN and Compuserve PPP accounts, but I didn’t have the opportunity to try them.

An upgrade is promised that will retrieve graphics if you so desire. Also, the current program is sixteen-bit. A thirty-two-bit version is on the way. These improvements will complete the presentation, and, if well done, will push this nifty agent app into the five-world range. Even in its present incarnation, the $39.95 that you invest will quickly be paid back in the form of saved personal and connect time.

Windows PC 3.x, 95 or NT Internet access

Overall Score:

Click for more reviews

Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.