That is simply no longer an issue for me. With almost 200 Gb of hard drive space I can run the complete or full installation of every program I own, rip every compact disc I own and save every song as an MP3 on my computer for quick access, create a virtual memory disk the size of Texas and still have room left to spare. It is great! That is until I have to find something.
I have partitioned the drive space into smaller portions and created folders in an attempt to provide some logical structure to all of this hard drive space. But, inevitably, when I am looking for some specific Word document or Excel spreadsheet I created two years ago it is not in the “appropriate” folder for some reason and I am left trying to hunt and peck my way through 200 Gb of hard drive space to find where I left it last.
Earlier this year I did a review of a product that solves that problem. The X1 Desktop Search program indexes the emails, email file attachments, files and contacts on a computer system. X1 can search through your entire computer in under a second and narrows the search on the fly as you type your search terms or key words. I love the product and I have found it indispensable. I highly recommend it, however it does come with a $99 (currently on sale for $75 on their web site) price tag.
In July of this year Microsoft announced that they are developing their own desktop search tool which they planned to release by 2006 and incorporate into the next incarnation of the Windows operating system currently codenamed “Longhorn”. Google trumped them by releasing a similar tool a couple of weeks ago.
The Google Desktop Search is officially a “beta” version- meaning that it is ostensibly still in testing and may have some minor glitches to be worked out still. But, it does essentially the same thing as the X1 Desktop Search tool except that it is free. Not only does it index and search email and files like X1, but the Google Desktop Search tool also indexes and searches instant message chat sessions and past web searches performed on the computer. The interface for the Google Desktop Search tool has the same look and feel as the Google web site and you can even opt to include your local desktop search results in your Google web search attempts. In other words, if you try to search on “Boston Red Sox” it will return the relevant web sites, but will also return any related files or information located on your local computer.
The bandwagon is picking up speed now. Yahoo has announced plans to release a similar tool and Microsoft has stated that they will release a beta version of an MSN-branded desktop search tool by the end of the year as well. Both the X1 and Google desktop search products are excellent tools to help you tame the expansive jungle of files on your hard drive, but some feel they can also pose a security risk.
The security concerns arise primarily from two issues. First, there is the issue of “What”, as in what sort of information is indexed and whether it may include confidential or private information. Then there is the issue of “Who”, as in who has access to the computer.
The Google Desktop Search utility indexes previous web searches and cached web pages, including secure web pages (commonly denoted by starting with “https” rather than simply “http”). While accessing a secure site like your Hotmail web-based email account generally requires entering the username and password, if Google Desktop Search is allowed to index that information a user could still sit down at the computer and type “hotmail” as a search term and retrieve messages that have been previously viewed and are now stored in the cache on the local computer. Entering search terms like “password” or “social security” might also reveal private or confidential information indexed by the utility.
Google Desktop Search does offer the ability to disable the indexing of secure web pages, making them off limits for future searches. By clicking on the “Desktop Preferences” link just to the right of the search entry field you can choose what types of information you do or do not want indexed and you can turn off the indexing of secure web pages by simply unchecking the box.
