I downloaded and installed Google Desktop Search today and it rocks! It took a while to index everything, and I mean everything. My suggestion is to go remove Web History and AOL IM Chats from the indexing, they could take a while. When ready, it runs fast and does an excellent job of searching. I used Lookout before in Outlook, but even though I have My Documents in the index, it rarely finds files. For email, Lookout is excellent and better integrated in Outlook. Google Desktop is great for files, although since there isn’t any cross linking I wonder what’s the page rank alghorhythm.
What I found best about it is that when you search anything from the Google Toolbar for IE, it also displays your local searches on top. Excellent! This takes Microsoft and Apple in for a ride. Switching costs are a big problem here and Google’s only issue so far is that you have to open a browser to search anything on the desktop. Would have preferred a single line or toolbar next to the start button.
Will explore this more, but interested to hear opinions. My wife’s first question: isn’t this kinda invasive? Hm, is google transmitting the files/data that are locally to their servers? hm, just for the paraniod go to gmail is too creepy