Google Desktop
Finally! ...searching your computer is fast and easy just like searching the Internet! Now, about those privacy issues...
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I'm inclined to show only one screen shot from my personal installation of Google Desktop Search:
Just about any other shot may reveal more of the internals of my computer files than I'm willing to share. And it's that power that has some online privacy advocates (and many paranoid computer users) in an uproar.
I love having access to this index of my personal data, but the thought of anyone else using it, uh ...gives me the creeps. And that's the crux of the current controversy surrounding Google Desktop Search (GDS, from here on). It makes accessing the data on your computer easy. Maybe a little too easy – considering the lack of password protection. But, before we get into what GDS is lacking, let's take a closer look at the entire package....
(Okay, so maybe I'll include a few carefully selected screenshots)
GDS Requirements and Installation
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System Requirements |
The GDS installation program is a small 400k download, but because of the extensive file index that GDS creates, the installer requires at least 1 GB of free space before it will install.
The index won't necessarily use the entire gigabyte of space; that depends on how much data is stored on your computer. For instance, the 38,472 items in my index take up 126 MB of space, so the 1 GB installation requirement ensures that you have the index space for very, very large collections of files.
GDS also requires that you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 with at least Service Pack ...
