Review: Google Desktop

Google Desktop is a desktop search replacement tool. It provides a full-text search that covers not only text files, but also emails, PDFs, music, chat, bookmarks and more.

Where To Get It: The download can be found at desktop.google.com

Cost: This tool is free.

How I Use It: I use this at work. It allows me to track down, through all of my hundreds of separate project notes, any piece of text or email that pertains to a key phrase. Since sometimes I am looking for something that is tangential to the main project, this allows me to search everything without having to remember where it is filed. It is definitely a much better search tool than the built-in Windows search, in that it returns accurate results and searches across more file types.

A side note: it does index the files, rather than do an on-the-fly search. It is best to allow it to index your hard drive while you are not using it.