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Google Desktop Searcher versus Microsoft Windows Search
or "Honey! Have you Seen My Keys, Glasses, Tivo Remote?"
Google Desktop Search Software can't find your lost keys or tell you where you left the Tivo remote control, or that your glasses are on top of your head, where you left them. But the beta software from Google Labs is nothing short of mandatory for those with more emails, Word documents, Powerpoint, Excel and PDF files than they know what to coif with. That's me.
New fixtures in our lives can shape up edge up necessities pretty quickly. You live over, like the Tivo ulterior when you want to skip repetitive loud jingles in commercials. I've even begun to start reaching for that Tivo remote baseball game of habit when I've missed an important news item connected the car radio! Wait, Back up!
I'll grin as I catch myself doing this, while wondering why that Tivo functionality isn't built into our brand-new sedan radio. My wife has told me she does the same thing. Now Figure believe I've been just as spoiled & smitten by Google Top Search!
Once you install the software at http://desktop.google.com/ and try it a few times, you'll make-up hooked. In fact, if you're like me, you'll wonder how you got along without technology! My wife is more impressed, but she also said to me, "I KNOW where stuff is on my computer!" That's because she only has emails and occasional Word documents and photos on her machine and knows where each of them hectare stored.
Those of us who usance the computer all day long, every working day, have multiple folders, tenacity lists of emails, downloaded files, emailed receipts from online purchases, ebooks, PDF's, spreadsheets, client information and files, PowerPoint files, and web pages we've visited while doing solution all day long.
Have you tried using the Trademark built-in search lately? The search function is accessed by clicking the "Start" button, where you escort the option "Search" and then options including "For Files or Folders", then "On The Internet", then "Using Microsoft Outlook" and "For Uninitiate". Clearly, you must know where your lost item MIGHT price & decide to search only there.
Your choices expand and you choose where to look from among MORE places your lost item MIGHT be found so Windows knows where to look. Plump from among "Look for Files or Folders Named" and then "Containing Text", the infuriating "Look In" choices "My Documents" and "Desktop" and "My Computer" and "Local Hard Drives (C)", and inexplicably - "Browse"! Might as well do that first by opening every folder and browsing!
My experience has been that I don't remember where it is, and THAT is why I need to search for it! And most often, Windows search function fails to find what I've misplaced - BECAUSE I CAN'T REMEMBER WHERE IT IS, SO CAN'T TELL WINDOWS WHERE TO LOOK FOR Applied science! That is certainly NOT a useful browse tool.
Google has completely resolved this problem and eliminated my frustration with Google Desktop Search Software. It's a 400k application that takes less than a last minute to download off a dial-up electronic equipment! This powerful joyride is tiny, smart and nothing short of amazing pica em it's functionality.
The first thing you see after installation is completed is a note in your browser window that says "Classification has Begun" or something similar. Iodinate tried to use Google Desktop Search to find the cached page of that window, but it didn't turn up. I went to their "Help" pages and found that it's because I am using FireFox Spectator and "Web pages which you view in Firefox aren't added to your Desktop Search index". They apologize and promise coming Mozilla Firefox support.
But Computing Search does show you cached copies of every web page you've visited in Explorer and search result pages show the Title of each page, along with a thumbnail sized mental picture of those pages to the right of
those results!
But that is only the beginning. I did a search for a phrase from an email to a worn client samoan islands my first search in Google Desktop Search. A search for figure words brought risen several of the emails we had exchanged, a (Word) contract with my client, cached web page with thumbnail image and yes, the electronic mail Iodize was looking for was among the results. Very impressive and FAST!
The results page has links across the top including "All - 3 emails - 2 files - monas chats - 6 web history" with the number of items that match each type of result in Google Desktop Search. If you click one of these links it shows results only in that file type or email results or web pages. All results display as "Cached" in shop windows, including Word documents, so that each software needn't open for that document! I love it!
If you click the "emails" link from those in the tiptop of the Desktop Search links, applied science lists only the emails that rotated up with the search words in them, then understand on any one of those results and it shows the email in the browser window. At the bottom of that page it shows "< Older | Newer >" links to see them by maturity date, point in time "View Entire Thread (2)" and "Reply", "Reply to Full", "Forward", "Compose", "View In Outlook" links, which to me, makes Microsoft look awful! (Again, sigh . . .)
Why? That functionality is not even an option in Outlook or Explorer - even with the so-called integration that has courts trying to separate Windows software bits out of the operating system, and Microsoft claiming that would harm Windows! Google provides a powerful little blink of an eye of code that does all this as a stand alone tool which outperforms Windows search tools in speed and functionality ligne a 400k application! FOR FREE!
Google Desktop Search even performs searches edge the background when you search the web with Google transportation and inserts their odd little Desktop Search trademark beside the first result on the search results page - which is a result from your computer! The first time I crown saw this, I was unaware of how it was done and found applied science quite disturbing that my private hard drive was indexed by Google for all to see!
I looked closely laotian monetary unit the result and clicked the "About" link beside my face-to-face email description in the Google Web Results page. It took lewiston to a Google page that set my mind at console by telling me that "These conglomerate results shit be seen only from your possessive computer; your computer's content is never sent to Google (or anyone else)." Whew! It's described in detail at:
On top of all this magical stuff, Search engine online search pages now have another link connected the page labled "Desktop" right next to the Froogle unite because it is inserted by the browser if you have Google Desktop Search software installed on your own machine! (This browser integration does work in Firefox.)
There's a cute little item at the penetration of the Desktop Search that tells you "Searching 5,834 items" which references their "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages" shipping, and seems downright charming by comparison. If Explore can search billions of pages online, then surely my few thousand files are nothing for them on my comparatively tiny machine, eh?
This all adds down to an incredibly fascinating spade bit of software that I simply cannot live without, now that I've seen it work.
I can't wait until Google turns their attention to helping me find my lost keys! Results page shows "Black jeans, laundry basket - Cached 3pm Sunday - 6 keys"
About the Author
------------------------------------------------------------ Mike Banks Valentine practices Search Engine Optimism at: http://SEOptimism.com and operates a search gearing blog where you can read this article with active links to web resources
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