Google comes home!

Have you ever had that moment of panic when you can't find a file or source of information on your desktop. Panic sets in as you realise that, once again, you are going to have to admit that you have "lost" a file. Or perhaps you can remember reading the information that has come from the LSDA, but which of the many received files is it in? And, of course, you need it straight away!

Google have introduced a search engine that will index your desktop and allow immediate searching of resources on your computer in much the same way as it searches the web. I downloaded the free software yesterday (less than 1 minute on a 64K ISDN link) and installed it without difficulty. Since then Google has been quietly beavering away indexing the entire contents of the hard drives, including web history, documents, chats and emails. Even though it hasn't finished this task I am getting some amazing results when I search for words or phrases.

Unlike windows explorer, which delivers a list of files in response to a search, Google presents the location and context just like it does from a web search. So finding the exact file required is now a doddle.

To test it I searched for "LSDA Handbook". Not only was I presented with the original e-mail (which frankly I have been unable to find for some time) but no less than 10 word documents referring to it, including the handbook itself. And it gave me the web history Elnet page.

So, if like me, you are not the best organised person in the world, and you need help making sense of your desktop, then you won't regret installing this particular gem.

www.google.co.uk for more information