AI on PCs

A Look Back: When “AI on PCs” Was a Magazine Cover Story

Before AI became a household term, there was PC AI – a bimonthly magazine published by Knowledge Technology Inc. in the United States. Running from Spring 1987 to 2002, PC AI focused on practical applications of artificial intelligence, including expert systems, neural networks, and emerging technologies tailored for PC users.

Fittingly, the magazine’s very first issue featured an article titled “AI on PCs”, capturing the early excitement around bringing intelligent systems to personal computers.

Image above from [3] PC-AI Index

Our connection to PC AI comes from the May/June 1999 issue, which featured an article titled “Text Mining: Dealing with Unstructured Data.” This piece highlighted the capabilities of dtSearch, alongside an advertisement for Desktop 5.1 for Windows 95/98/NT. We produced French and German translated versions of dtSearch 6.1 and later developed the multilingual stemming files used in dtSearch products.

The article demonstrated how users could craft powerful search queries like:

(neural w/1 networks) and (finance or (stock w/1 market)) and (prediction or forecasting)

This query would retrieve documents containing the phrase “neural networks”, along with either “finance” or “stock market”, and either “prediction” or “forecasting.” Combined with features like fuzzy searching, stemming, and other advanced options, users could sculpt highly effective searches to mine insights from unstructured data.

The software would then return a list of relevant documents, complete with previews—an early glimpse of the intelligent search experiences we now take for granted.

Why Run LLMs Locally? The Future of AI is on Your PC

Text mining is still as essential as ever—perhaps even more so. Today, information is scattered across a wider variety of formats and platforms than ever before. But the way we interact with that information has evolved dramatically. Users no longer just want a list of links—they expect to ask questions in natural language and receive clear, concise answers or even well-reasoned arguments.

Thanks to Large Language Models (LLMs), that’s now possible.

LLMs have become the face of AI for most people. When we talk about “AI on a PC,” what we really mean is “LLMs on a PC.” However, accessing cutting-edge LLMs online can be expensive – some frontier models cost upwards of $200/month. Even “free” AI chat apps often come with frustrating limitations on usage, conversation length, or speed.

But what if you could run powerful LLMs locally, right on your home or office network?

Imagine having:

• No subscriptions
• No usage limits
• Full privacy—your data never leaves your device
• Freedom to experiment with different models for different tasks

The good news? You can. With today’s hardware and open-source tools, setting up multiple LLMs on a modern PC is not only possible – it’s surprisingly straightforward.

So why wait? Here’s a step-by-step guide to running multiple LLMs on a small office network

If you need help along the way, we’re here for you.

TagsAI, desktop search, full-text, LLM, PC

Free S3 Indexer Plugin

A free ‘S3 demo’ plugin is now available for immediate download. The plugin allows eSearch Pro (1.1.9225 and later) to index files stored in an Amazon S3 bucket.

The eSearch Pro project is an AI-powered information retrieval application with a UI that can be translated into any language. Developers can create other plugins to connect to data sources like Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox using the plugin API.

Download the plugin and the latest copy of eSearch Pro from here: https://dtsearch.co.uk/news/product/plugin-s3-demo/

See the eSearch Pro User Guide (PDF) for installation instructions.

eSearch Pro combines AI-powered web search with comprehensive indexed search using the open-source Lucene engine. Advanced features include a word list of all the words in your documents, syntax highlighting on source code and JSON files. Support for image display with geolocation tags to display location in the viewer, Jupiter Notebooks, ePub and JSONL file support.

TagsAI, desktop, information, retrieval, S3, search

eSearch Pro updated

The new version offers faster indexing of email (.eml) files and includes a ‘copy files’ feature that can export results, including eml files and their attachments. The AI Mode introduces several new features to enhance the AI-powered web search experience. See the release notes for version 1.0.9190 below:

Added:

• AI Mode: Cancel button added in viewer to cancel long running chats.
• Copy File: Copies attachments into a folder under the destination folder.
• Copy File… button on results task bar.
• New email (.eml) parser. Unfiltered attachments will also show in index (Requires rebuild of old indexes)

Changes:

• AI Mode: at start-up, the last query will be displayed but not submitted, allowing users to pickup where they left off if they want to.
• CTRL+A selects all results and checks all checkboxes.
• AI Mode: connection timeout increased to 10 mins.

Free download here now . Choose quick checkout and just enter your email address!

New eSearch Pro beta – multiple AI models

eSearch Pro 1.0.9183 is available for download here: eSearch Pro Click Quick Checkout.

This latest version now supports multiple connections to all Perplexity real-time web search models, as well as connections to other online OpenAI-compatible models, including those accessible via local URLs.

Introducing eSearch Pro has now been updated to issue 12.

Free trial reverts to eSearch Lite after 30-days. No limit on AI Mode. eSearch Lite is free forever.

Beta testers wanted! contact support@electronart.co.uk to get latest information.

eSearch Pro launch!

The first public beta 30-day trial launches 30 September 2024!

eSearch Pro is a comprehensive multilingual, full-text search application developed for the European market. It uniquely allows immediate UI language switching and user translation.

Read about its other special features in “Introducing eSearch Pro.”

After the trial period, eSearch Pro reverts to eSearch Lite, which is free for private & commercial use.

All feedback and suggestions are welcome!

eSearch Pro is a work in progress and is still in the beta test phase. It may lack some functionality or have limitations with certain file types.

Choose Quick Checkout at the store!

Tagsdesktop search, full-text, index, multilingual, translatable