Google Desktop 2
Google have been busy this past week, releasing two new products.
The first of these was the beta of Google Desktop 2, the new release of their desktop search application. I never tried the first version, but heard good things about it, so I thought I would give this new release a go.
One of the main new features about this second version was the addition of a sidebar showing all sorts of information. I've been using the Desktop Sidebar for a while now so I was very interested to compare the two!
Initial Thoughts - Desktop Search
I've never tried a desktop search tool before (excluding the standard windows stuff) and was surprised by how quick it works! I love the QuickFind feature that shows the matches as you type - very neat! I also like the way it searches everything, my Gmail inbox, my outlook email, my web history, and all my files!
The way it integrates into a standard Google web search is also pretty good, in that you can search the web directly from the desktop search box, and any web searches you do will also show your desktop search results!
It did take an awful long time to index my machine initially however as it only does this while the machine is idle (ie when the mouse hasn't moved for 60 seconds). As I was trying this on my work computer I tended to be using it when it was on, so the indexing wasn't getting very far! I ended up leaving the machine on over night for a few days to complete the process. This is only a once of though, so not really an issue.
There is also no option (that I've found) to restrict the area it searching. For instance, if I know the file is located in a certain directory, why cant I restrict the search to just that directory? Instead I end up having to make the search terms more specific to filter out the unwanted locations!
Overall I think the search feature is very neat, but I wonder how often I will be using it!
For example, If I'm searching source code etc, I think I'm still gonna use the search features of the editors like jEdit even though they are slower! This is because they are more advanced in terms of regular expression matching and replace options for example.
I'm also not sure what performance hit the automatic indexing has, but anyway, I will be keeping it installed for the time being to see how/if I end up using it!
Initial Thoughts - Sidebar
There are some things to like about the Google sidebar, but in the main it seems to basic to me. After using Desktop Sidebar it feels like a step backwards!
I like the idea of automatically adding feeds from sites you visit, and I like the idea of trying to aggregate the top news stories etc, but there were a lot of things that I wanted but couldn't find.
For example:
You can probably guess I didn't keep the sidebar on for long :)
Having said all that though, this is only a beta version, and given the resources at Google, they could easily fix these things if they wanted to!
They have also made the APIs open, and given the number of people who will want to work with it, I can see a whole host of sidebar plugins appearing very quickly!
So although I'm not using their sidebar for now, I'm not writing it off for ever!! :)
The first of these was the beta of Google Desktop 2, the new release of their desktop search application. I never tried the first version, but heard good things about it, so I thought I would give this new release a go.
One of the main new features about this second version was the addition of a sidebar showing all sorts of information. I've been using the Desktop Sidebar for a while now so I was very interested to compare the two!
Initial Thoughts - Desktop Search
I've never tried a desktop search tool before (excluding the standard windows stuff) and was surprised by how quick it works! I love the QuickFind feature that shows the matches as you type - very neat! I also like the way it searches everything, my Gmail inbox, my outlook email, my web history, and all my files!
The way it integrates into a standard Google web search is also pretty good, in that you can search the web directly from the desktop search box, and any web searches you do will also show your desktop search results!
It did take an awful long time to index my machine initially however as it only does this while the machine is idle (ie when the mouse hasn't moved for 60 seconds). As I was trying this on my work computer I tended to be using it when it was on, so the indexing wasn't getting very far! I ended up leaving the machine on over night for a few days to complete the process. This is only a once of though, so not really an issue.
There is also no option (that I've found) to restrict the area it searching. For instance, if I know the file is located in a certain directory, why cant I restrict the search to just that directory? Instead I end up having to make the search terms more specific to filter out the unwanted locations!
Overall I think the search feature is very neat, but I wonder how often I will be using it!
For example, If I'm searching source code etc, I think I'm still gonna use the search features of the editors like jEdit even though they are slower! This is because they are more advanced in terms of regular expression matching and replace options for example.
I'm also not sure what performance hit the automatic indexing has, but anyway, I will be keeping it installed for the time being to see how/if I end up using it!
Initial Thoughts - Sidebar
There are some things to like about the Google sidebar, but in the main it seems to basic to me. After using Desktop Sidebar it feels like a step backwards!
I like the idea of automatically adding feeds from sites you visit, and I like the idea of trying to aggregate the top news stories etc, but there were a lot of things that I wanted but couldn't find.
For example:
- No way to scroll the feed entries without opening up the extra panel.
- No way to order the feed entries - it seems to randomly change from recent stuff, to posts a few days old!
- The system Monitor plugin doesn't show the details of running processes, ie what's using the CPU, memory etc.
- Can't hide the panel titles
- No skin support
- I couldn't find a way to get the news panel to show more UK relevant news. It seemed to be mainly American stuff.
- The clock panel (TimeWarp) is not very good, and has no way to show the date
You can probably guess I didn't keep the sidebar on for long :)
Having said all that though, this is only a beta version, and given the resources at Google, they could easily fix these things if they wanted to!
They have also made the APIs open, and given the number of people who will want to work with it, I can see a whole host of sidebar plugins appearing very quickly!
So although I'm not using their sidebar for now, I'm not writing it off for ever!! :)
posted by Gezz at
11:40 pm
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