Review: The just-released Google Desktop has improved security features, is a lot more open-source program friendly and boasts time-saving search features.Let me open my kicking the tires of Google's new desktop application by saying that I love desktop search programs like a fat man loves doughnuts.
Although, I'm one of those people who file documents and correspondences religiously in directory structures like C:\corr\eweek\2004\manuscripts, I still can't find what I need when I need it, as quickly as I'd like. Enter Google Inc.'s Google Desktop Search 1.0.
Google's free desktop search application only came out of beta on Monday with a new release that boasts better security, support for popular open-source programs and an open SDK (software development kit) that enables programmers to add non-supported file types to the program's search range.
Read more here about the release of Google Desktop Search 1.0.
For me, though, they've already taken care of the most important programs by adding support for Adobe Acrobat PDFs; e-mail from Mozilla, Mozilla Thunderbird and Netscape; and recently viewed Web pages from the Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape browsers.
The program already had support for Microsoft Office 2000 and higher applications like Excel, Word and Outlook and for AIM, the AOL Instant Messenger client. Google Desktop also now indexes video, images and audio metadata, such as title and artist.
Unfortunately, it still runs only on Windows. To be precise, you need XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. You can't run it on Linux or Mac OS systems. Google may—note, I say may—eventually port it to those platforms.
Installing it is a snap … if you have administrator privileges. Without them, you'll be unable to install, or for that matter, use the program successfully. Only users who also have administrator privileges can use Google Desktop, so on a typical business PC with multiple users, only managers can access Desktop.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Google Desktop Is in a Class by Itself
