Is Google Desktop good for *anything*?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve got a truckload of excel, word and adobe files on both local and network drives, and thought Google Desktop would be the perfect solution–search by text within the doc! Specify the drive! A single easy interface rather than cumbersome Windows XP search dialog with that annoying dog cartoon!

Yeah, right.

Except for getting rid of the dog, in my experience so far Google Desktop does none of the above. Sure, I specify the drive but then it gives me a billion results from all drives whether I like it or not. Can’t search by filename only, get a billiion hits from irrelevant tables within irrelevant PDFs that aren’t what I’m looking for, and when I would like to search for text inside a file (Excel), it comes up with jack.

Is this similar to your experience? Am I doing something wrong?
Also, have you had any security concerns about it?

2

I’d say narrow your search. I use it all the time and love it.

3

I’ve never used it but I’ve never had a problem with the XP Search that I already have. Most of my programs are MS generated anyways so I assume that the native file search will handle searching within Office apps as well as can be hoped. I’m not really sure where the Google Desktop would be expected to be an improvement.

4

I tried Google Desktop Search and had similar problems with it as the OP. It just didn’t seem to work properly at all. Plus it seemed to use up CPU power. Or maybe it caused crashes. Can’t recall, but whatever it was it annoyed me so much I got rid of it.

5

I would be totally lost without it - I use it about 50 times a day.

It can see inside all my Excel files, and specify filetype or email from/to, etc.

The only thing I can’t get it to do is to isolate its search within a particular drive. However “browse timeline” is incredibly helpful.

ETA: in my experience, it eats CPU only when it’s in the initial index sweep mode - after that, I don’t even notice it running.

ETA2: you can isolate drives - via “Advanced search”.

6

See, that’s why I wonder if I’m doing something wrong–I do exactly this, but still get a billion hits from all drives, not just the one I specified.

7

It’s about 1 bazillion times faster than the native search, and it actually finds things, which I never could get Windows search to do. Really, it’s instantaneous.

I’m not sure what the OP’s issue is - beyond the initial cataloging when you first install it, I can’t even tell it’s running. I’m with jjimm - I use it several times a day, and don’t want to live without it.