My Surmise

I've wanted to give Google Desktop a try for a while now but I never really got around to it. Yesterday I finally decided to try it out. After I installed it took only about an hour to index my 22 GB hard drive (It was indexed while my computer was idle). I had three major concerns about using this program. First I was afraid that the index would take up a massive amount of space. Second, I was afraid that it would phone home to Google and send them info from my files. Third, I was afraid that the program would slow down the startup and functionality of my computer. All of my fears were put at ease after doing a little testing. The index is only 268 MB after indexing 22 GB of files. Also I was able to block Google desktop from accessing the internet through my firewall. Blocking the access did not limit the programs search functionality. However, blocking Google Desktop's internet access did limit the functionality of the sidebar, which I don't have any interest in using anyway. To ease my last fear, my computer continued to run and startup at normal speed. The program is very helpful. If I cant find a file but I know what it's about, all I have to do is search for a few keywords and Google's got the file for me in a matter of seconds. Sure beats window's search, which could take hours to search my PC and doesn't even search the content of the files. I would definitely recommend this program to any computer user.