Find Your Files Faster With Google Desktop

09/23/2006

I have used Google Desktop several times in the past and each time I have uninstalled it for various reasons. With their latest release, they have added a ton of new features, updated some old features that did not work so well, and in general done massive improvements on it.

Desktop Searching

The primary purpose of Google Desktop is as an Advanced Search feature for your personal files. While this feature faster and easier than the Microsoft Search Companion built into Windows XP, if you are looking for instant results as soon as you install the program, you will be very disappointed. In order for Google Desktop to properly search your computer, it must first index all of your files. For those of you with lots of things on your computer, this could take upwards of 5 hours to do. Fortunately, for those of you worried about it hogging all your memory, the index only runs when the computer is idle for more than 30 seconds. Plus it also indexes files in real time, so any files will be instantly searchable as soon as you create them.

The Google Desktop search can be used in one of two ways. The first is by typing your query in to the Google Search Bar, this is located either in your Taskbar or in the Google Sidebar option. You can do a simple search by typing in what you are looking for, and it will instantaneously bring up what it feels are relevant results in a window either above or below the search bar. Your second option is through your web browser. If you have Google Desktop installed, you will get a Desktop tab available on the Google home page. This will allow you to search your desktop through the same interface as a normal Google search. Either way will allow you to quickly search your desktop for the files you need. Also, both methods allow you to quickly switch to a web search with just a click of the mouse.

The Google Sidebar

The Google Sidebar is in my opinion far more useful than the desktop search feature. It is very customizable. Through a tool called Google Gadgets, you can make your Sidebar display a multitude of different things depending on what you use your computer for. I will highlight a few of the things that would be useful to the casual user, but your mileage may vary on these tools. Some of the Google Gadgets are created by Google, while others are third party software. You can find lots of different Gadgets, ranging from multiplayer Reversi to news. The four gadgets I have displayed on my copy of Google Desktop are Web Clips, News, Photos, and Weather.

RSS Feeds

Web Clips are installed by default with Google Desktop. They are Googles version of RSS. Google did a very nice job with this. They made adding sites to get RSS feeds from extremely easy. Just by visiting the site it will often automatically pick up the RSS feed and add it to your Web Clips. The downside to this is that it has a tendency to pick up RSS feeds from sites that you did not realize even supported it and the information put up may not be of any use to you. However, if this happens, Google made it very easy to remove these useless RSS suppliers and even add new ones of your choice. The Layout for Web Clips is very simple. It simply states the headline of the articles, the supplier of them, and the amount of time that has passed since the article was released.

News

Also installed by default is the Google News Gadget. Google did a very nice job on this as well. Google has a pool of news sites that it pulls information from. Depending on your searching and browsing habits on the internet, this Google News Gadget will change the type of content that it gives you. If you browse a lot of sports sites, it will give you sports news, while if you brose a lot of technology sites, it will give you technology news. This is very useful in order to keep you up to date on the information that interests you without the information that is useless and irrelevant to you. It displays in the same format as the Web Clips with the Headline, Supplier, and amount of time since the articles were released.

Weighing The Pros and Cons

Overall, I was impressed with Google Desktop. However, this product is not without disadvantages. For those of you on dial-up, the only feature of this program that works well is the desktop search. Without the dedicated internet connection, the sidebar cannot update its content. Since a good portion of the gadgets update content regularly, they will often time out and just display nothing. There are exceptions to this though. There are also many gadgets out there that do not update content via the web, so if you rely heavily on those, then you may still find the sidebar useful on dial-up. Otherwise I would suggest just leaving it as a search bar.

By default, when you type something into the search bar on Google Desktop and press return, instead of bringing up all the results on your computer, it brings up an actual Google search. While it notifies you that there are desktop results at the top of your browser, I would expect to get my desktop results first, since that is what this software was made for. However, Google makes it easy to change this as well, giving you several other options of how you want the search bar to function.

By biggest issue with the Google Sidebar is the amount of screen real estate it takes up. While it is not as much of an issue on higher resolution monitors such as 1280x1024 and above, when used on a screen of 1024x768 or below, it takes up far more of the screen than it should. Luckily, Google takes care of that too. They now give the option of resizing the bar to take up less room. I personally use it on a dual screen setup and it helps to keep me up to date on the information I am looking for without all the fuss of it taking up too much of my screen.

This program as a whole really impressed me and if used right, it has the potential for helping make your day more efficient. If not that, then at the very least, it can be used to make your day more fun.

Rating: 4/5