Home | Resource Guides | Tech Tips | Network Administration | Hardware | Certification

Home › News › Google

Google Desktop 5 sports slick new look: like Vista without Vista's overhead

Hot on the heels of announcing the upcoming addition of Presentations to its online office suite, Google has released a new beta of Google Desktop. Now in its fifth iteration the most prominent changes have been made to the sidebar.

A number of gadgets have been redesigned and a new dialog for installing them has been added.

We counted about 480 available gadgets, give or take a few, so it seems Google is beating Microsoft with its lacklustre Windows Vista gadget collection.

The sidebar now blends in with desktop wallpaper. The Google Desktop blog says that it "samples the color of the wallpaper and fades in the sampled color".

We can verify that it does look good. In fact it gives off a Vista glass vibe without the overhead of Vista. (On a number of occasions, though, it seemed a tad slow to render.)

Desktop search now allows quick preview of documents. This is a rather useful feature. Instead of opening Outlook, for example, the user can click on "preview" to see the email in a scrollable window. This is faster than clicking on "View in Outlook" and then waiting for 30 seconds just to check something.

Google Desktop can index Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files as well as normal text files, IM histories, music, images, video and zips.

It can be extended by adding plugins for indexation of things like JAVA and JAV source files (with syntax highlighting!).

The security in Google Desktop 5 Beta has also been beefed up to make your "search experience safer".

Kevin Tom, Google's Product Manager, writes that "whether you're clicking on links from documents, IMs and email or browsing the web, if we have information that the site you're visiting might be trying to steal your personal information or install malicious software on your computer, we'll give you a warning first so you can decide if you want to use the site".

It goes without saying that you should still exercise caution. Google's security filter could be useful but it will not keep you completely safe.

The Gadgets Dialog: much easier to add gadgets now

Search Preview: actually not a gimmick!

To read more about the new additions to Google Desktop check out this link or to get the exact same information reposted by another marketing manager check out this link.

What features would you like to see in the next beta release of Google Desktop?