Stephen Withers
Thursday, 05 April 2007 04:44
Business IT -
Technology
Page 1 of 2
The first public beta of Google Desktop for Mac has arrived, providing integrated searching of local files and the web.
"[W]e took the time to develop a product that deeply integrates into Mac OS X and maintains its high standards of usability," wrote Google software engineer Mike Pinkerton in the company's Mac blog. "This is a Mac product through and through, from the bezel on our search box down to correctly (and securely) handling multiple users and FileVault."
Full text searches are supported for many file types include text, PDF, HTML, email (Mail, Entourage), iChat transcripts, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, music and video files, and Address Book contacts. The program also searches file and folder names.
The top results appear in a list beneath the search box, and the complete results can be seen in the traditional Google format in a browser. This is sufficiently similar to Spotlight (Apple's own desktop search tool that is a part of Mac OS X 10.4) that users should have no problem adapting. Instead of typing command-space to open Spotlight, tap the command key twice to activate Google Desktop.
Google Desktop provides a degree of integration with Spotlight, taking advantage of any installed Spotlight importers to broaden the range of file types that can be searched. It also uses the Spotlight privacy list to determine which items should not be searched. The first version of Google Desktop does not appear to be able to index PC-formatted drives.
Spotlight's performance is lacking on single core hardware. It begins searching as soon as the user starts typing the search terms, chewing up CPU power and making the user interface unresponsive while the 'spinning beachball' appears. Google Desktop does the same partial word searches during entry, but without the stuttering that can make Spotlight frustrating. Google Desktop also returns results more quickly than Spotlight does.
But there's more.
LATEST HEADLINES FROM YOUR IT
