When the topic of desktop searching is brought, Google desktop and maybe Microsoft "Windows Search" are the only 2 competing software available both for windows only.
I’ve tried both of the for a while now and I think I made up my mind when it comes to judging the 2 famous desktop searches.
Starting with Google desktop, I think it’s pretty descent looking, full of cool features plugable for many file types and comes with a pretty neat indexing process (you can’t tell it’s working).
The sidebar that comes with Google desktop is also really nice for a Windows XP user like myself. Since we are not allowed to have Windows Vista gadgets. Those gadgets are really entertaining and time saving for most of the time (There are games that would waste your time you know).
I’ve tried Google Desktop for 3 months now and the one thing I noticed is that it’s taking really huge disc space (2.5GBs) which is a little bit annoying for me. The other con is the way it misbehaves after starting a DirectX full screen app (Fancy word for a game).
So the keywords to describing Google Desktop are (Entertaining, plugable, neat, HUGE DISC SPACE, MISBEHAVING)
Now it’s time for Microsoft WindowsSearch 3.0 (I’ve Downloaded version 4 but haven’t installed it yet)
Well the only good thing about WindowsSearch so far, is that it didn’t take as much disc space as Google desktop. I’m trying hard to find any advantage for WindowsSearch over Google Desktop. Seems like the only pro to me.
It doesn’t take a long time to figure out what’s wrong with WindowsSearch. When indexing files you can always tell, Have a pretty strange way of categorizing files, looks hideous, And for some reason have to reindex your files on every system startup!
I just installed the New version of WindowsSearch, doesn’t look different from the older version. But is supposed to be capable of indexing more file types (OpenOffice files, PDFs…). The really STUPID thing was the setup, it was simple and I didn’t even notice it working. But thankfully I read the message shown when setup completed successfully, or else my computer would have rebooted when clicking finish and without even asking me if I wanted to reboot.
Not to be a biased reviewer but once again Google kicks some Microsoft butt.