Google's desktop search not rated highly

Keeper Finders - Five new programs that let you search your hard drive without having a seizure. By Paul Boutin: "Grade: C+. Google's desktop program has been plagued by questions about security problems that could let remote hackers search your PC. But the real problem here is that you can't search your entire PC. The program not only restricts searches to a preset list of folders, but it also won't match partial filenames. Google's desktop search is perhaps the least geek-friendly of the bunch, save Ask Jeeves. It doesn't have any of the special search syntax ('paul NOT boutin') or smart results sorting that Google's Web search is known for. If your photos have names like paul001.jpg, paul023.jpg, searching for 'paul' or 'paul*' won't turn up anything. If you don't know a wayward file's exact name, or if it's hiding in some backwater of your disk, you're simply out of luck."

Grade: A. Copernic has almost as many configuration options as the rest put together but lacks some of the best features of the lesser tools: Jeeves' all-categories-at-once search and tabbed results, Google's live AIM indexing and Web page thumbnails, MSN's advanced search syntax and index of Outlook info, and HotBot's RSS search. Still, Copernic finds more than any other desktop search and gives you control over how it indexes your computer. Search Engine Watch has confirmed that AOL's still-under-wraps desktop search is "powered by Copernic," but you can download Copernic for free right now without joining AOL. At the price, it's one heck of a deal.

Albert Einstein said the height of ignorance was condemnation without investigation.

I wonder how overly headstrong I was for spamming my addressbook with a Google Desktop Search recommendation without first checking the competition. Maybe I'll try Copernic's for a while...