Alternative to Google Desktop?

[rjbinney]

I've been pretty happy with Google Desktop - pretty speedy results, and doesn't seem detrimental to "normal" performance.

But I've noticed that a recent update has taken away its ability to index an external drive (NOT Flash, a regular drive). I've totally uninstalled and reinstalled, I've added the drive, removed the drive, added the drive, rinsed, repeated.

I receive a "Unknown error accessing files during crawling" at best, when I get ANY type of response on the Preferences page.

I can't find a solution, so I'm thinking time to find an alternative. Also, I'm not digging that on Windows 7, to run GD effectively, I need to turn off Windows indexing, which screws up my Outlook search (which is superior to GD, but only when searching Outlook).

[phoop007]

that depends on your OS vista and 7 have windows side bar

[phoop007]

you might also try some of these http://alternativeto.net/software/google-desktop/

[BC_Programmer]

http://tech-informer.com/bye-bye-google-desktopit-was-fun-while-it-lasted-24/

The reason I've never used Google desktop search, personally, is that it doesn't index file names, only their content. Most of my searches comprise of trying to find a file or a specific set of files, or something. I don't generally need to search by content; and, even if I did, Windows comes with that capability anyway.

Really, the only time I use a "search" would be in the windows 7 (and before that windows Vista) start menu search bar. If I can't find it that way, I generally open the Search tool I wrote to find it. (which also presents the files in the way I prefer, unlike the search results in Windows Explorer)

Also: Windows Search can be told to index external drives; right-click the drive, choose properties, and check off "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".

that depends on your OS vista and 7 have windows side bar

Err...Windows sidebar is unrelated to searching...

[rjbinney]

See I do frequently need to search for content...  I share lots of files and frequently need to "find that file that had that xxxx in it".

I find the Google Desktop to be sooooooooooooooooooooooo much faster than Windows Search, but will give that a try. Also looking forward to that "alternativeto" website.

Will post results soon!