Related link: http://desktop.google.com/
Editor’s note: Don’t miss Rael Dornfest’s O’Reilly Network article today detailing the new Google Desktop.
I installed the beta Google Desktop on my PC. It seems to rock.
It integrates seamlessly with the web-based Google; any search on the web now shows desktop results as well. Email messages that it finds are displayed in the browser window. It’s supposed to index AOL chat logs as well as all the usual document types.
This is the kind of desktop/web integration that really makes sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever use Windows Explorer or Outlook to search again!
What do you think of Google Desktop?
Google Desktop
I gave it a try, and while the web integration and speed are really nice, I found the fact that it doesn't support PDF files (a public format) a seriously limiting factor. More control over what gets cached would be nice as well (having two copies of every document takes a lot of disk)
I'm currently trying out the copernic desktop. It seems a little heavier from the client aspect, and is a little slower, but it does index almost everything, including PDFs. No final decisions yet though..