Google Desktop Review

I finally got fed up with Vista's built in indexing and thought who better to index my files than the Masters of the Search Universe, i.e. Google.

So I installed Google Desktop (5.8.0809.23506) and what an eye opening experience it has been.

I was aware of potential security/privacy issues and so made very sure not to enable the "Search Across Computers" option that transfers my data to Google so that it can be accessed elsewhere - if if only ostensibly by me. I also very carefully avoided enabling
the "Enable Enhanced Content Indexing" check-box: all I wanted was basic content indexing, not the "backup and view previous versions", web-history search "and more", or thumbnails of images. Just the basic index my data files stuff please Mr Google.

I was surprised at what wasn't found... and then I discovered that unless "Enhanced Context Indexing" is enabled Google Desktop doesn't seem to index at all! On Vista it uses the built in (if enabled) Microsoft Index - so, of course, when I turned off Vista's indexing I got nothing at all! Even when it was on I would get results like this...

I searched for "LQG" and got 10 results; by summary at the top they were described as "1 email... 1 file... 1 other... no chats... etc.", but looking at the list itself it showed 10 items which by icon were: 1 pdf, 2 zip, 7 emails... despite the fact that I had told Google Dekstop NOT to index emails. In other words, when it's not doing its own indexing it doesn't know which way's up.

Because I couldn't find files I knew existed, I of course referred to the online help. Here it says:







But look at the prefs...

Do you see an item called "Enable content indexing..." No, of course not. They can't keep their Help (sic) aligned with the application. No wonder I couldn't find the right thing to enable to actually get my files indexed.

But do you also notice that I said don't index C:? You can tell Google Desktop not to index certain locations - and you can specifically tell it to index others.

But what is not clear is that the Don't overrides the Do... so when I wanted to index only Documents, which has been relocated to another partition (say, X:) I said "don't index X:" "do index X:\Documents" - and of course got nothing. I then had to specifically NOT index lots of other folders on X: to leave, by omission, only Documents. Not clever.

However, I did in the end enable "Enhanced" indexing. But now I discover so many other things that are inadequate to appalling I am going to remove it, but I thought you should know the (further) gory details.

Firstly, if you want to rebuild the indexes you have to Uninstall and Reinstall Google Desktop. Yes, that's what it says here. That's mind bogglingly antediluvian for starters.

I also have lots of very long documents - in the case of "IT", the book, currently running to over half a million words if you include all the annotations etc. - but does Google Desktop index them properly? Does it hell! "Up to 10,000 words" - usually less "to save space" are indexed. That is utterly useless. I have the space, I want an index! Do I get a choice about trading space for completeness? No. Obviously they've taken a leaf out of Microsoft's book and decided that's not a choice I could sensibly want. Unfortunately, the limitation on document sizing is buried in the Help (sic) file so I doubt that many people are aware of just how incomplete their searches might be. Thanks to Mark Russinovich for bring the partial indexing to my attention, but since his blog entry was written in 2005 I thought I'd check - and the answer is still the same. Three years later, storage getting cheaper and bigger every day and still Google Desktop does not do what it says on the imagined tin.

With regards to the privacy concerns etc., Google Desktop does apparently have some sort of facility to encrypt the indexes but the check-box doesn't seem to be enabled and there's nothing here about why that may be. Anyway, I have cunningly redirected (using Tweak GDS, or a simple registry hack) the Google Desktop index location to place it on a TrueCrypt encrypted drive... taking care of course that the encrypted drive is mounted before Google Desktop starts - otherwise it reverts back to its default location without any notification or "please locate" dialog.

However, while trying to work out why Windows Defender is suddenly taking so long to scan the system I looked in C:\Users\Me.MyMachine\AppData\Local\Temp and found gigabytes of what looked like temporary ZIP extractions. Yes, I had told Google Desktop to search Zip files but I didn't know it was going to dump the contents back onto disk (and not delete them when finished) in what I suspect is an unencrypted location even if Index Encryption could be turned on.

Other miscellaneous shortcomings:

• There's no filename option, so you can't restrict your search to documents of known name.
• There's no "OR" or "NOT" operator for boolean searches, though you can prefix a search terms with "-" to exclude it
• oh, I give up, it just isn't good enough

In other words, unless you just want to index lots of personal type emails and you're not concerned about privacy don't waste your time with Google Desktop: it only does partial searches, you can't filter by filename, its not well documented, and for a "product" now several years old and, strangely for Google no longer in beta, it still feels like an early beta product.

Google Searching on the Web: Hero
Google Desktop Search: Zero

I wonder if that old Outlook add-on... what was it called... LookOut is still around? I actually used that on a TB RAID server at work a few years back and it indexed EVERYTHING (that it could read)

Google Desktop: Time Wasting Stuff (the time I spent downloading, installing, trying to configure, debug, test, etc. etc. etc. before giving up.)

Heroes, Germans, Wombats! A Veritable Cornucopia of Stuff

Today's hero is Jancsó Ferenc, English speaking engineer at the Panasonic Service Centre (Kalotaseg u) here in Budapest...

Helpful - no make that very helpful - courteous, and above all, well... helpful! Give that man a raise!

I did have two dead camcorders - one, a Panasonic GS-120 remains dead owning to an influx of water from the great storm of last year ("Beyond Economic Repair", Internally Fubar'd, of just PFU!) despite his very best intent, but the other one, also a Panasonic now nearly 10 years old, has just been cured of its slight old age, slippy wheels and dodgy micro-switch and apparently now works just fine.

However, merely fulfilling one's job description isn't enough for real heroism: despite not-fixing the GS-120 I do now I have pictures of the water damage (Isn't it just fascinating? Shall I include one here? Yeah - then you too can share the thrill... later) and some information that might allow me to fix it myself one day... once I get it apart. In which case that repair will also eventually also be due to Mr Jancsó.

But, while we are on the topic of self-repair (c.f. Python, Monty "How to take your appendix out on the Piccadilly Line" The Brand New Monty Python Papperbok) just one piece of advice: beware of Japanese hoovers - they are not designed to be repaired and take phenomenal effort, great skill and tremendous courage (oh, let me see, what other heroic attributes does hoover repair require... honour, true grit, indefatigability, deep love of the Mother/Father land, etc. etc. etc.) even to open up - you do have to keep asking yourself

a) HTF did they put this *&^%$ together?
b) WTFTB if I pull any harder on this ^%"*&^ &%*(% !!!! cover? (WTFT break?)
c) WFI designed this (*$~# thing?

before you can even confront the problem itself. It took me two hours to get the last one open.

It is however an enlightening experience. Honestly. *

Hmmm.... hoovers.... reminds me of a rather unusual film I saw once... I think it was German (what a surprise!)

But, since we seem to have drifted from Japan to Germany, some handy hints...

BE CAREFUL! The German for hoover is "Staubsauger" - "dust sucker", definitely not to be confused with "Staus-säuger - which would be a "dust suckler". You will get very strange looks if you ask for the latter when you want the former (though if you do in fact want the latter I expect you're used to such things by now...)

Which brings me, and rather neatly I thought, to that handy piece of conversational German I acquired from Mr Bubley some years back, "Mein Beutelmaus hat verstopfung", or "My wombat is constipated".

Sadly, most Germans seem to have forgotten the word Beutelmaus, and know only "wombat", which is a shame; the etymology is quite nice...

If anyone knows of any equally pointless conversation gambits in other tongues, do let me know... (well, pointless for the audience - all the fun is in watching their faces as you announce in all seriousness the predicament of your marsupial companion animal...)

Ciao!

* If you would like to sign up for one of our occasional courses "Enlightenment Through The Repair of White & Brown Goods" please drop me a line. I also run workshops on

a) Capability Modelling with Alphabetti Spaghetti
b) Cosmology & Cheesecake: What THEY don't want you to know!
c) Impersonating a Giraffe (and other savannah animals)

and can whip up a course on almost anything given adequate incentive... money may mean nothing to me, but that doesn't mean I don't use it.

NB I think they must put something in my coffee today... this is unusually random stuff - even for me.

Heroes and Zeroes

From time to time I like to share my unvaluable opinions on product & service quality, and occasionally to offer a humble snippet of advice to those I find not quite as excellent as they could be, and paeans of praise to those who really do far more than they should do - sometimes even making up for their previous failings.

I like grovelling; I like it when someone bends over backwards to apologise and make amends... it gives me such a... such a... warm feeling inside. Moist almost.

Anyway, I feels it's OK to demand a little grovelling now: I've had to do it in business (keep the contract, win the business, keep people employed...), why shouldn't others?

To this end I keep my H&Z list, and now it's time to publish it. It's all historical, some of it going back years - but if you have a good grudge you should keep it, treasure it, take it out to admire it occasionally... no doubt everyone on the Zeroes list is now a paragon of virtue or rectitude (except Steganos - yet).

Remember folks, this is a sample of one; all facts are opinions, all opinions are mine (well, my opinions are mine, but you get the idea) and if you think that the Anonymous Corporation of Erewhon should be hit where it hurts (stock price, revenue, whatever) that's your choice. I'm just saying that not everything is always rosy.

And likewise if you decide to invest in, buy from - whatever - the Anonymous Corporation of Erewhon and it all goes pear shaped, don't blame me (OK, you can blame me, but I doubt you can sue me)

So here it is...

Hero: Visions Express - completely screwed up my eye test and two pairs of glasses, but apologised fulsomely and made appropriate amends. I have been back to them since; I like them.

Zero: Hewlett Packard - for lousy product quality and technical support of their Pavilion zd8123ea (catchy name, eh?) I replaced it with a Rock Xtreme CTX Pro - Nice!

Hero: Norwich Union insurance - yes, praise for an insurance company! My nice new video camera was stolen from a locked hotel room in Amsterdam; one police report and a simple phone call later all I had to do was wander across to Jessops on New Oxford street to pick up a replacement - as simple as that!

Zero: Nokia for their PC Suite bloatware, whose installation and uninstallation sagas deserve a separate blog of their own... but even I have a life (of sorts)

Hero: Topaz Support for truly outstanding service of my old Toshiba Satellite laptop: fast efficient and they dealt with the unfortunate courier incident (which was not their fault at all) with magnificent aplomb.

Zero: Steganos Gmbh - nice software, Teutonic support. The primary inspiration for this blog.

Zero: (Not enough Heroes to go round) Vodaphone for a website without appropriate security (I'm sure it's been fixed by now) and a 3 month wait to fix it. Oh, and while I was complaining about this they sent personal info around in open emails. That's how important they thought my privacy and security was.

Zero: Paypal - I think they are absolutely right to be extremely security conscious - I've had my identity stolen once and it's not nice. However... it is possible to be a teensy weensy bit over zealous, such as "limiting" an account because the IP address of the machine it was set up from wasn't in the same country as the Visa card billing address. OK, cause for concern and I would have been happy to resolve that if the resolution method basically hadn't involved me handing my financial records over on a silver platter. Why could they not use the Visa Secure service for verification? Who knows. Anyway, the immediate need for a PayPal account evaporated, so I didn't need to resolve the issue I just wanted to close down the limited account - i.e. not send anybody any money ever by PayPal.

Not possible: your account is limited. Please provide your life history, DNA sample and submit to polygraphic examination for identity verification (it's hyperbole, if you take me literally you are an idiot). Did I get it closed down without submitting to this proctologically intimate examination? Yes, but it took an email to the CEO of a billion $ corporation to do it. I'm glad she was listening, but it shouldn't have been necessary.