Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Hurray for Google Desktop
After the morning I've had trying to recover lost files, I cannot sing the praises of Google Desktop enough. I sat down to work on an important report, only to find that the version that opened up from my Word history list was strangely devoid of content, and in fact resembled my very first outline sketch, not the half-completed document I saved last month. An hour's trawling through my folders and waiting for the abominal Windows search got me nowhere, so I typed a key phrase into Google Desktop and sighed as it returned only the same, empty version that I'd already found. But then I saw the magic words "cached copy"... not only does Google provide an extremely fast search of your hard drive, it maintains your own personal cache of different file versions. I was able to retrieve my lost file with one click. now that's what I call usability.
After the morning I've had trying to recover lost files, I cannot sing the praises of Google Desktop enough. I sat down to work on an important report, only to find that the version that opened up from my Word history list was strangely devoid of content, and in fact resembled my very first outline sketch, not the half-completed document I saved last month. An hour's trawling through my folders and waiting for the abominal Windows search got me nowhere, so I typed a key phrase into Google Desktop and sighed as it returned only the same, empty version that I'd already found. But then I saw the magic words "cached copy"... not only does Google provide an extremely fast search of your hard drive, it maintains your own personal cache of different file versions. I was able to retrieve my lost file with one click. now that's what I call usability.
Comments:
Unfortunately it doesn't work with Computer Associate's eTrust ezAntivirus - it refuses to install.
Google claim there is a fix: remove antivirus, install google desktop, reinstall antivirus... or something like that. That seems like far to much effort (and may result in problems with antivirus) so I'm passing for the meantime.
Google claim there is a fix: remove antivirus, install google desktop, reinstall antivirus... or something like that. That seems like far to much effort (and may result in problems with antivirus) so I'm passing for the meantime.
There is something not quite right about having google index your personal data.
Maybe I am just being paranoid?
It sounds really useful, but I am going to stick to keeping files and emails organised in folders (and keeping good backups)
Maybe I am just being paranoid?
It sounds really useful, but I am going to stick to keeping files and emails organised in folders (and keeping good backups)
Google's motivation: ``it's easier to search 6 billion documents on the Internet than it has been to find a single file on your hard drive." - Washington Post
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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