Google Desktop Search vs Windows Vista Search

Comparing Google's Desktop search with Windows Vista desktop search. Accessing the Google Desktop search is easy, the fastest way is probably by pressing twice on Ctrl or just F3 as it seems like it'll replace Vista's search hot-key. But even if you turn off or had Google Desktop turned off it seems like it'll start-up again by pressing F3. So you won't get access of Vista's search by that Hot key. In Vista when searching, the fastest way except then from pressing F3 is by clicking at the start button and use the limited search space in the menu or opening Windows Explorer. Another way is to access the Search with Google desktop is in the sidebar or in the task bar/floating desktop depending on how you have configured it. But there are no desktop search function provided neither in the task bar or desktop from Vista. Doing a conclusion, Google wins here.

Quick search box

For Google Desktop it's not a big deal to display the desktop search result. The result will display instant even if the volume of the result is heavy. Even the quick find seems not to be impacted by any performance loose. With Vista search without indexing, it'll crawl throu files but that wouldn't be fair to compare the search without indexing but even in previously indexed files it'll crawl. But running Vista with it's default search and indexing it's nearly as fast as Google Desktop. Comparing the search paramters Google offers a bit more than Vista. One thing to remember with Google Desktop, that if you turn off Google Desktop or disable the content indexing it won't update files opened (to cache them) and new files that's added to the computer. Comparing to Windows Vista, the indexing is a service and as long as it's not turned off it'll continue index files. I've to say that both search function is working ok and I think it's a matter of taste which one to do desktop search with. In my opinion I liked to see Google Desktop as the winner on the search part and Vista winner in the indexing.

How about the performance changes when they are indexing? We know that Google Desktop starts it's indexing when the computer is idle. With Google Desktop there is at least to say noticeable performance changes when the the indexing has started, fortunately you wont notice it as you are not using your computer but this is not the case with Windows Vista search indexing. Windows Vista search indexing will run continuously and the performance will decrease much. This performance decrease will lower in the time as less files need to be indexed. Even thou both of them use's a lot of resources when indexing Google desktop is a bit smarter to not index while the computer is in use.