Product Reviews

Information overload is a well-used phrase in this modern age, but software developers have come up with tools that can bring a little digital calm to the desktop chaos. This month we're spoilt with two new products: Google's Desktop Search and Copernic's Desktop Search, both of which hunt down items lost in your PC.

Google's Desktop Search will be familiar to users of its web-based search engine. In fact, once installed, Desktop Search appears as an option on the Google home page. An icon on your desktop toolbar provides easy access.

Both software tools index all the information on your PC, which can take some time if your hard disk is particularly cluttered. Google can also index information from AOL email and instant messaging software, Outlook messages and cached web pages you've visited. You can stop it searching anything you want to hide by using the Preferences options.

Copernic covers many of the same areas as Google, although it doesn't search

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AOL email messages or chat files. It also presents information in a different way. Rather than listing every file it finds, it displays files by type, and you can search for what you want by switching between views. These look slightly friendlier, and the thumbnail previews in particular make it easier to find a specific image file.

Privacy is a concern with both programs. Both tools can search and display your web history, email messages and, in Google's case, chat sessions. If the software is installed on a public PC, anyone can search through any sensitive information you have accessed or sent. You can disable this feature in Google's Preferences and in Copernic's Options menu if you want to keep your searches secret. A password-protection feature would have been useful, though, because if you click on an email found during a search, you can view its contents even if the email software is protected.

Another issue thrown up by Google is the company's claims that it uses local searches for context-sensitive advertising, as it does for internet searches. It's not clear what data the program sends to Google's servers, and this worries some people.

As both programs are free, it's hard to choose between them. Both provide fast, comprehensive search facilities, and we've found them both extremely useful while testing them.

However, we think Google's Desktop Search is the better choice. Its plain, uncluttered interface is as simple to use as Google's internet search engine, and it logs AOL's instant messenger and email messages too.