Does anyone use Google desktop search ?

I recently discovered some great software. It's web-search's desktop
search. With it, you can put all of your files on your computer
and find anything with just word or phrase. It's really good for us

davesvideo...

I'm on a Mac and the "Find" function already does that. You can search
for contentts as well as title. I would not ne surprised if "Search" on
a PCC would have the same ability.

Garry James...

Search works in an archaic sort of way, but not as well as a desktop
search. I keep a 400 mg folder with 100s of articles and history
notes I've read over the past years. It's in various formats
(wordpad, html, doc, text) . I also have a CD with many Gutenberg
ebooks which contains some of the great works of the West.

Suppose I want to re-read an old article but all I can remember is
that it was written by Joe Sobran and he discussed tolerance.

I typed "sobran" and "tolerance" into SEARCH and gave up after 6
minutes. I typed the same into my desktop search and had a choice of
three articles within a few seconds.

You can also use all the web search restrictions such as "intext"
"inurl" etc to narrow down a search. It's really quite handy if you
save a lot of material.

davesvideo...

I just checked on my wide's PC, and indeed it does have that functuon.
So everyone already has that capability with out searching the web.

Sir Frederick...

I don't think it's the same.
Here are some clues :

davesvideo...

Yes, it definitely is better organized than a simple search. But,
"Search" is good enough to help ne locate the misplaced (happens a lot)

A trick that I have started doing again, is creating my own icons.
Instead of the default folder icon that looks like a manila envelope, I
have a set that reminds me what is in the folder (file cabinet for data
base, reel of film for movie files, etc). If you are visually oriented
(like me) it works better than just a name.

Rumpelstiltskin...

I wish I could change the default icon for ".exe" files.
Particularly in my "games" folder, there are a lot of things I
haven't put onto the desktop, and it's hard to spot the
ultrabland default icon for .exe files. I usually sort by
extension just so I can find spot them. I don't know why
Microsoft made the default icon for the most important kind
of file from a user's perspective so inconspicuous, and
didn't allow changing that icon to a target or something
that catches one's eye.

You can of course change the icon for any particular file just
as you can change the icon for a particular folder on the
desktop, of course, but I don't want to change icons one-by-one,
I want a more conspicuous default icon for .exe files in general.

I like making my own icons. My icon for the Visual Basic
composer is Opus the Penguin. The icon I made for my
icon-creation program (IconForge) is Mammy Yokum. For
my Games folder, I have Dilbert sitting at his desk, with his red
tie flying and his computer staring back at him. For all three
of those, I scanned a cartoon and reduced it to 32x32, at
which point I can only recognize it because I already know
what it's supposed to be, but that gives me something to
work on without losing proper proportions, until I get it to
look really snappy,

Harry Thompson...

Rumple, don't use icons. Change your file list to details, and tell Windows
to display filetype. Then, BigGame will display as BigGame.exe, and so on.
To get Windows to display filetypes,

Start->Control Panel->Appearance and Themes->Folder Options

In Folder Options, click View tab. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file
types" to force display of filetype in details list. Also click "Show hidden
files and folders" so that detail view shows all files and folders, hidden
and system files as well as ordinary files.

Icons will still be displayed as thumbnails prefacing the details.

Rumpelstiltskin...

Oh yeah, that's what I do, but the icons are easier to spot than
reading the list, if the icons are conspicous enough to catch your
eye, which is not the case for the default icon for ".exe" files.
My mahjongg solitare game has four files called "mahjongg"
with various extensions, for example, and a few other files that
begin "mah". I switch to "sort by extension" to locate the four
or five ".exe" files and then pick out the "mahjongg.exe" file
from those. I don't use Windows Explorer much, so it's easy to
spot the ".exe" files because the extension name is always
displayed as ".exe" rather than as something I don't know or
can't remember.

The thing keeps track of what's on the system, so it need not
search the system when ask, just the data that it has developed.

pack rats who never throw anything away.

Sir Frederick...

I use it. Find it useful. It also protects me from a lot of
frustration when I think I may have something, but don't.