Honestly? I don’t yet know what GDS Mac gives me that I don’t get from a pop3 archive of my gmail account and Google Importer for Spotlight…

This seems interesting, if only for the facility that allows you to index your personal bookmarks with high priority in Google searches. I’ve told Google repeatedly that I would switch to Google Bookmarks (from del.icio.us) if they would add bookmark search to the main Google search results, but now it looks like I might not have to. If I sync del.icio.us with Safari, and then get Google Desktop Search to index those bookmarks, I could be all set!

I haven’t installed the software yet, though… does GDS allow you to only index bookmarks, or would I have to go whole-hog with my hard drive as well? If the latter, I’ll definitely skip the whole thing.

It archives the whole hard drive, although apparently it won’t index anything you exclude from spotlight searches.

The nice part, to me, was the speed at which it adds Safari history to the index - it must be well-nigh instant, as pages I had visited a minute ago showed up in the results. And it reminded me how nice it would be if I could include mail messages in my Quicksilver catalog (perhaps that’s possible, but I haven’t figured it out). However, my interest in it is more about how it would influence Alcor et al. to add features to QS than any real need to run it myself. It’s just not a QS replacement by a long shot, which is fine.

I haven’t installed GDS on my MacBook yet, but I have been using it on my main Windows work PC for a year. I really like it. It searches my E-Mail, GMail and RSS feed archive instantly and the results are easy to sort through. No, you can’t do anything with the search results like you can with Quicksilver, but that really isn’t the point.

Use it for a week before giving up on it. Also, at least in the windows version, it’s not a resource hog.

One thing I like to use GDS for is call screening. I put the phone number from the caller ID into it and see if I want to talk with them :)

I just got here googling via quicksilver for “butt-sucking.” Totally disappointed.

I use Windows in my work environment and Mac at home. I find Google Desktop (and Launchy) quite useful on the PC as there is no Spotlight\Quicksilver. While I haven’t tried GDS on the Mac, my first reaction upon hearing the news of a Mac version was “Why would you need that?”.

Spotlight fits the bill for me on the Mac.

I’ve already turned it off. The best part for me was being able to search my GMail from the desktop, but I had problems with the system being slow/unresponsive which seemed to start yesterday and ended today when I disabled it and rebooted.

I’m glad they’re making one, but I hope it gets better soon.

I will admit happily that Google has released some great software for the big 3 OS’s (windows, OSX, Linux) I do not know how GDS mac is useful. I can do everything I need with Spotlight and Quicksilver. It would make more sense to me if it worked on 10.3 although I dont think there are many people still using it. But like anything else a personal computer is about comfort, it gives Mac users another tool to work with their data. More power to those who need GDS.

Peace.

I have been toying with it and like it, but it doesn’t outdo QS+Spotlight in any way - except the incorporated search in GMail - together with Mail.app (which is a given of course)

I suspect the chances of survival would very much improve with an QS plug in!

No final verdict yet.

I used GD for a day and then baleeted it earlier today. There seemed to be nothing it offered that Quicksilver didn’t do better. There was just no added value in keeping GD around…

I’ve yet to try it… it looks cool though.

I installed it. I ran it. I found that it doesn’t scan my Soho Notes library, and who knows what else. I deleted it.

Oh, and I use Mail.app to back up my Gmail, so my Gmail is indexed anyhow.

Great minds think alike Merlin—-

For me it is a lot of unnecessary and intrusive redundancy if you have already mastered Spotlight and use Quicksilver.

See my post from last night http://sfp101.com

Yeah, I downloaded it and tried to use it because I read on Hawk Wings that it worked with mail tags but so far nada. That was about the only thing that got me excited about it. But not anymore really.

As someone who still can’t figure out how to get Quicksilver to work correctly (how about offering a Quicksilver weekend course in North Carolina, Merlin?), I’m finding GooDesk to be a great way to launch applications and find old documents or videos.

And it’s a very nice, simple interface for, say, my mom, who doesn’t want to attend a weekend seminar on how to get QS working.

Is it perfect? No. But I can’t stand spotlight (I really wish I could figure out how to turn it off), and so until I figure out QS, it’s what I’ll use.

I installed Google Desktop yesterday. Then, I opened Camino and remembered how Google Desktop works (I used it on Windows)… through a web browser interface.

I then uninstalled it. I think that was the quickest install-uninstall ever for me. Quicksilver and Spotlight fit the bill for me.

No it won’t help. Quicksilver is far more flexible and goes far deeper without the nagging feeling that Google Corp (which I love, really) is looking over my shoulder. And actually I find myself using Spotlight as well in quite a structured way. Whenever I need to do something, Quicksilver is there. To find anything then Spotlight.

However Google Docs and Spreadheets is growing on me fast.

Ad nauseam! AD NAUSEAM!! Jeez, I don’t understand why highly-productive people don’t have the time to learn Latin anymore…

You’re absolutely right in one sense: Google Desktop is nothing in comparison to Quicksilver. And it’s not supposed to be. On the other hand, Spotlight pales in comparison to Google Desktop. My favourite aspect is that it uses the same modifiers as google searches online. I also like the indexing of my Gmail… I’ve always found the searching with in Apple Mail frustrating. I find that it works faster than Spotlight and indexes more items. For that matter, it does a better job of indexing my files than Quicksilver. So, inclusion, I’ve switched from a Quicksilver/Spotlight combination to a Quicksilver/Google combination. Google Desktop is simply better at searching my system.

As someone that uses both a mobile and desktop Mac I needed to use a webmail client to keep my folders (or labels) in sync. I think that GD is great because it makes the webmail feel like desktop mail. GD is the perfect companion for spotlight I heavily recommend it (just remove the icon from your dock in the preferences).

I don’t see what Spotlight buys me over Quicksilver.

Yes I agree. I downloaded it and looked at it. The concept of searching with the same search fu as Google online is interesting - but Quicksilver is more configurable and flexible. I’m not sure that for more advanced lists of things that I always want to use a webbrowser. I like Quicksilver’s ability to interactively search through a returned list.

About the only interesting feature I see, is that if I do a web search and there are results that already match on my computer, it will include them.

So far, it’s stayed installed on my laptop - but I’m really not too sure how much it will get used. If it ends up slowing things down due to drive scanning I’ll probably ditch it.

QuickSilver - finding stuff (apps/resources) and doing things with them Spotlight - finding things within stuff like a phrase from a pdf book, a method name from an API doc

Google Desktop? meh. Maybe it does all that but nothing could pry me away from QS with it’s triggers and proxy objects. When I need to search my mail I’d have gmail open anyway.

Since I don’t care about power-user-dweeb stuff that the Quicksilver interface gives you, and since Google Desktop looks much faster than Spotlight, it may work for me. My own needs are either for (1) a launcher, or (2) something to do a detailed kiboze with. It looks like Google Desktop may do the job, without being too hateworthy. The Google Mac programmers working on this seem to understand what they are doing extremely well, too.

I’m going to reserve final judgement, at least until it finally finishes indexing my hard drive. Which it is still working at, a day later.

Whenever I fear that the English language is going to slip into some simulacrum of Twitterrific, text messaging short-hand mediocrity… I can trust in Merlin Mann to hold down the fort. Keep up the good work. Us old English majors masquerading as IT drones appreciate it.

I’m not at all surprised that many people using Spotlight don’t feel a need to move to Quicksilver. Functionality is key and if Spotlight allows an average user an average product (for which they may not need the additional abilities of Quicksilver because as apple tells you “you can find anything on your computer as quickly as you type”), then most people will be happy with it and go on their merry way. Ignorance is bliss… usually.

I’d really like quicksilver to pull from GDS without needing a different sort of system. I’ve installed it, but I’m realizing that it’s really not something that I use much. Maybe I’m just a filing nazi, but I don’t really find myself using spotlight very much, let alone google desktop, but having said that I think I might like the speed/look/feel of google desktop. who knows.

I agree with JeffH about Spotlight being a painful experience, but I think I’m going to live in hope that they fix it in Leopard rather than install another layer of indexing…

I’m another whose machine was pretty much rendered unusable during the indexing (which was hellishly slow). After about 24 hours I pulled the plug and tried again. At this stage there were a grand total of 64 zombie mds processes, so something was going badly wrong. The machine wouldn’t start up any new processes —the limit is 100— so even trying to kill the existing zombies was impossible (terminal just give a “process completed” title when trying to open a new window).

Post a logout (at first) and then a reboot the processes once again proceeded to occupy every available slot. Sorry, that’s enough for me to throw it away… (For the record; this was on an old eMac G4 with 1GB of RAM.)

Paul

“I agree with JeffH about Spotlight being a painful experience, but I think I’m going to live in hope that they fix it in Leopard rather than install another layer of indexing…” — Quentin

I have to agree. I’m not a huge fan of spotlight, but google desktop on the mac seems more like fixing something that isn’t broken. Leopard will (hopefully) improved spotlight to a level where it’s at least responsive. In the interim, I don’t see myself using it enough to warrant installing. If I need to search google, my browser is but a click away.

As far as GDS on Windows, it’s a whole different story. Even when using it on Vista, I find that the Google Desktop does a much better job indexing and presenting results than the built-in stuff.