So I’ve just switched over to Google Desktop, having been using Copernic for about a year (and Lookout before that). It’s much improved over its previous incarnations; includes integration into Outlook and does find things very easily. So kudos. Google’s also a lot more stable than Copernic was (so far, even on my hulking desktop), which was one of about four applications that regularly stopped responding whilst it drained my CPU of all available resource.

On the minus side, it seems to be bloating. I want a fully thin client app (and like the Scratch pad utility as such) but really, really dislike the sheer memory consuming chunkiness of all the sidebar elements. And so have disabled them…

Do think that this type of unstructured search software will be increasingly important; I’m waiting for Google to move the indexes online, move the file storage online, secure it all properly and enable multiple profiles (Armand work, Armand home, Armand laptop, Armand PDA) to take care of the remaining offline content, and then we’re away!