Is the "Google Desktop Search" Helping Anyone?

mlevenhagen · #1 (**permalink**) 03-09-2005, 11:54 AM

I've had Google Desktop Search installed since it was launched months ago. It was a leap of faith, but I love gadgets and thought it would be useful considering I have right now per Google:

Emails 6,668
Chats 169
Web history 57,394
Files 19,083

Even though I have folders and try to keep things straight it's getting to the point I have so many folders I can't figure out what folder I put something in!

I have it set as my browsers home page... which is really a waste for as little as I use it...

I'm curious how many people are actually using it with success OR even use it regularly.

It's seems like everytime I actually do a desktop search for something I KNOW is there ON MY DESKTOP, it's not indexed? Where is it?

I just did 3 searchs for different Word file by the names of the files. NOTHING! It is only showing cached/web history results...

Your Thoughts?

P.S. I don't want this to be a Google Bashing thread. I'm just curious if this particular piece of software is useful to anyone :o)

**brian.mark** · #2 (**permalink**) 03-09-2005, 12:07 PM

When I had it installed, I had to upgrade RAM to 2GB for the files I was trying to keep indexed. After toying with it for quite a while, I gave up since it never seemed to find anything that I really wanted. Since it only does full matches (document.doc) and not partial (document), I found it to be worthless. This was especially the case for searching email, since I could remember part of someone's email address, but not usually the whole thing. Substring matching seemed necessary to me for local searches, but I can understand why it isn't such a good idea on the web. Web and desktop search really is a different animal.

Brian.

PizdusInc · #3 (**permalink**) 03-09-2005, 12:44 PM

I installed it back when it was in beta, it indexed some number of files on my computer but I never used it to find anything. I rarely search for files on my comp (seem to know where everything is) so it is useless for me right now.

mlevenhagen · #4 (**permalink**) 03-09-2005, 02:03 PM

Well, I think I'm going to have to stay organized the old fashioned way and just get better at organizing my folders.

I guess when I downloaded it I thought it would find content from within docs etc. Now that I've discovered it doesn't, there's no point to it.