Mac Users - Google Desktop is finally here!

Since I'm not the most organized person, I rely a lot on the search functions of my computer.

When Apple came out with the Tiger operating system, they touted Spotlight as the perfect product for people like me. Just type a keyword and it finds that keyword not only in the file name, but also if it's buried within a file anywhere on your computer.

It didn't take long to realize that Spotlight had serious limitations. It was sluggish. It could not exclude words or phrases from a given search. Thus, if I wanted to find all instances of my first name without my last name, Spotlight could not do it. Nor could it handle searches for phrases within quotes.

Enter Google Desktop for Mac. I downloaded and installed the application, which immediately began to index every file on my hard drive and two external backup drives. This took about 12 hours, during which time I had trouble using my computer for other functions because it was really slowed down by Google Desktop's indexing process.

Downloader's remorse was looming, but I resisted the urge to abort the process. And I was glad I did.

Compared with Spotlight, Google Desktop is lighting fast in opening and in identifying files containing my keywords. I can use my favorite Google search operators, such as putting quotation marks around phrases so that Google Desktop finds that exact sequence of words; or placing a minus sign in front of words I want to exclude. All of this is done within the familiar Google layout in my Firefox browser. Except instead of searching the web, I'm searching the contents of my computer.

Since this product is still in beta, there are a few kinks to be worked out. But if you can't wait, give Google Desktop a try.

A bit of advice: Install it before you go to sleep, in order to minimize being inconvenienced by computer slowdown while Google Desktop is building the index of files on your computer.

Get Google Desktop for Mac here

And if you're a Windows user you can download the Windows version here.

-- Pauline Wallin, Ph.D. http;//teachmeinternet.com