I was happy using Windows default file search. This tool is good for searching files with file names known in part or full. However, when it comes to searching a file with some text, this tool is of little help. Would have been handy if support for regular expression for file name as well as ‘text in file’ was available.
While working on new project, I have to look for error codes spread across different files and Windows file search utility was not handy for this.
So I decided to try Google Desktop application which states –
Google Desktop makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you’ve viewed, and more. By making your computer searchable, Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks.
I installed this application last week and tried to use search for few files and soon realized that it has to index all my documents before I could use it. Then I forgot about it and started using Windows default file search giving the criteria ‘A word or phrase in the file’ till another day when I badly needed to search for a code with specific text and thats when I considered using Google Desktop. To my surprise it was effective and probably it had indexed all my documents.
The search tool bar is also very convenient to use you hit Cntrl twice and its there at your disposal to get the file you are looking for. I will update you more on the application as and when I use the application. Till then Happy Desktop Searching 🙂
Nilesh's Weblog 