For the past few months, I’ve been using LookOut for Outlook to tame my ever-enlarging Inboxes. It does a phenomenal job and it’s free (http://www.lookoutsoft.com). I don’t think I could live without it as I have instant access to all my archives.
But now, I just installed Google’s Desktop Search tool http://desktop.google.com/, a tool that essentially “googlizes” your entire computer: files, emails, everything – is now accessible from a Google Search.
They both have effectively done the same job: LookOut has an option to look into My Documents, if you configure it and Google has an option to look at your email.
The thing I really like about Google’s search is that it automatically groups my emails. So if I do a search for Customer Contract, and there are 5 different email threads spanning 100 emails – they appear as 5 “found” items but note how many emails are on each one. LookOut , in contrast, lists each email which can make it hard to move through.
Google’s search also seems much faster.
Some people note some security options on the Google Desktop search (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000264.html) but those can be turned off.
Let me know which one you prefer.
If you’re looking to use the search program for more than just e-mails I suggest you give Copernic Desktop Search a try.
Really neat program which gives previews of the files that it finds.
I’m there, too, and I vote for Google Desktop, by two reasons:
– Lookout is not available anymore. They got bought by Microsoft, and you can’t download the product anymore, although they (gratiously) allow you to keep using what you already installed.
– Google is a trustworthy company for me, both from a privacy and a technical-quality perspective.
As far as I see, Google tackled one of the problems WinFS is not covering for the (who knows?) next two years. Those guys are pretty smart, uh?
Regards,
Martín
Actually, Martin, that’s not quite true. LookOut can be downloaded right here:
http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html