Windows Tips and Tricks

Google has a free program called Google Desktop that provides a bunch of little programs called “gadgets” as well as desktop search. It’s labelled as a beta application and has been receiving frequent upgrades. It is now in version 4. I tried an older version but I prefer other desktop search programs with fewer privacy concerns and I don’t really have time for all the gadgets. Plenty of other people do like it, however, and a review of the latest version is in PC Magazine. The count of “gadgets” was 159 and growing and the article says

For me, on the other hand, it’s all about the gadgets. You’ll find a marvelously eclectic cornucopia of both whimsical programs that have no practical value and little apps you could end up finding truly useful in your day-to-day life—SyncPad, for instance, which lets you place a sticky note on one computer and view it on all computers you’ve set up with Google’s Search Across Computers feature.

The Silicon Valley newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, has an informative article about this spread of Google onto the computer desktop.

Desktop brings the thoroughness and agility of Google’s Internet searches to your own computer, vastly outperforming the default PC search tool offered by Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and its Outlook e-mail program.

It also offers a dashboard-like “sidebar” that you can place on your screen to display customizable modules of information. These include, for example, at-a-glance views of your e-mail inbox, news clips, photo albums or PC performance, and games such as Pac-Man or sudoku (which is a relief — the world clearly needs more opportunities to see time vaporized by sudoku).

The article also mentions some problems, including privacy issues and the resource usage.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 29th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.