Google have released their new non-beta desktop search. Since they have given me pagerank 0, here's some spiteful Microsoft Desktop Search Evangelism:
- New GDS has a plugin API. MDS already has installable filters for extra file types based on established technology: see here and here and especially here. Ok, IFilters are all based on deeply pretentious COM models so I wouldn't want to try writing them. Interesting to see that you can load filters through a win32 API called LoadIFilter. Wonder if this is of any use?
- MDS can index PDF files by downloading Adobes own plugin.
- MDS indexes my outlook messages, even though they are stored on an exchange server: can GDS do that?
- MDS doesn't take copies of the documents it indexes so saves lots of disk space.
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I do find MSN search useful, especially the taskbar thing. I like the way
launches the registry editor without me having to open the 'run' box or a command prompt. Dunno if GDS can do this.
=regedit
- I don't like the way GDS gives results in a web browser: it only gives you the option of opening files it finds: you cannot edit them, copy them or whatever. MDS results are presented in a file explorer, much more useful.
Peter's Moblog
Ok, I tried GDS but it still doesn't tell you which directories it is going to index so I uninstalled it. I just want control, I don't want it indexing and taking cache copies of any old crap it finds.
Peter