I can't index my gmail account :(
And big problem - only US weather.
For end - I really want see support of ukrainian language :)

BTW, Google makes good thing as GDesktop 2.0 :)

P.S. Make many others plug-ins :)

Except it is even more memory hungry then the beta. bad, bad, bad

Help comes up in Chinese because I am in China, there is no way to select a language.

Weather info is limited to the USA.

It has been stuck on 79% complete for the initial indexing. Been >15 hours now.

Not many useful plugins for this, same as Konfabulator. Cool to play with for a time then off to the bitbucket.

I'm sure you already know this so this may or may help but it only indexes when your computer is idle. This is only for the first time through after that it indexes in the background.

I love it !!! FOr an old geezer getting from a. to b. simply is without a doubt an advantage thus you've gotta love that Google .Simple,helpful , and cheap . Want do want .. MIcrosoft ?

How does one upgrade from the beta to the final version of Google Desktop?

Just download it from the official website. The program will update itself when you run the .exe installer.

Well it works on x64 now so I will check it out.

I did'nt think I would want to spend screen realestate on something like this, but I have come to really like it. Nice product, thanks Google! As usual you can do no wrong. Congrats on taking over the world by the way.

My screen rez is 1600x1200 on a 21" and I wouldn't waist the space either.

This is good...but I don't think I'll use it. I actually got rid of my start menu and accidentally my desktop, so now the only way to do anything on my computer is through hotkeys like Win+R. :p

If I don't mind that(which I don't)...then I don't need this. Good stuff though, for anyone that uses all those features!

Best part about it...

IT WORKS ON X64!

Yes! :)

I just don't understand desktop sidebars.

I just don't get it. If I want to look something up or read something I can open my browser. Same thing with the weather. I can have a Konfabulator widget on my desktop for that.

I don't need to look at a stupid picture frame or see previews of my email (Got outlook for that). I don't need a scratchpad either. I already got one, it's called "NOTEPAD".

People just love gimicks.

I hate to admit it, but I really do agree with you about sidebars.

Every other sidebar just doesn't cut it for me, but a sidebar with space to record things at a whim (and access them instantly) and keep track of my to do list, along with the usual news/weather/etc., is a very convenient way to organize my life. I love the ability to use the same sidebar to instantly search my computer.

Just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean others can't.

I, for one, appreciate the RSS aggregator. It lets me know almost immediately when there is a new story on BetaNews, for example. And I have tons of other feeds in it as well. I use the System Monitor to show CPU, Memory, Network, and HD activity. I also have Google Talk docked inside of it. It's all right there for me to check at a glance. Pretty convenient if you ask me.

Try to respect others' opinions, just as I try (I really do) to respect yours.

Well wincement I'm gonna have to agree with you. I like having things at a glace and basically one click away. Bout the only usless thing I see is the map, it is pretty though.

I agree.

I used one for a good 5 months (desktop sidebar, unltil there was a release that was so buggy and bloated they pulled it last year,) and I really really liked it. But then I started noticing little bugs that grew into annoyances. Take RSS for example. This "feed" technology has it's good and bad implementations. The good is when there are sites where I infrequently want to check something out but don't want to visit the site very often. Then there are the sites that I visit a lot, (tech report and betanews) but don't want to see the RSS feeds. (because on betanews RSS software feeds can't be filtered to my preferences)
Take /.'s RSS feed. I dont' know what it's like now, but in the past it was grossly out of date, often having articles 2-3 hours behind everything else on the front page, And I'm not even a subscriber.
Also, *every* RSS feed has failed me, at some point or another. It's extremely prone to breakage. So then I just end up at the site anyway.

Then I found that the sidebar would just irritate me wherever I put it. I like to dock the OS's menubar on the left side, and I couldn't find a good place to put it and keep it visible, but unobtrusive.

I liked the comics and various stats shown at a glance. Perhaps I'll try again, but I found that browsers, mail clients, and notepads already do their own tasks best. For instance, if I get a phone call I'm just never going to fire up my sidebar to enter a note. it's not a habit I could ever grow into. it's still paper and pen, or Winkey+R+notepad+enter.

meh

Well technically you keep the sidebar open at ALL times, so when you get a phonecall, for example, you just click the "Scratch Pad" pane and enter whatever you want. That's the whole convenience of the To Do/Scratch Pad/News functionality: it's always right in front of you.

Agree. From my point of view, GDS sideBar is good in marketing, but bad in usage. I've intalled GDS 2.0, but quickly disable all sidebar feature.

Gotta say I agree with wincement also.

I find lots of use in it. Konfabulator is pretty but is hell on games. You can close it and play your game, but what's the sense of having something you want to see all the time if you have to close it at some point for some reason? It uses alot of memory per widget, so it adds up after having it for a while or using a good few widgets. The GD is very convenient. It replaced my startup weather program, my post it notes program, having to open outlook or get addons to view to-dos and tasks, and it's replaced my rss aggregators. Any of the parts I don't need I close (like the picture dock and the system info dock).
I can respect that people don't want to use it, those of you who don't want like it need to learn to respect that some people do. It's not at all any kind of gimick, it's functional and has many uses. Open your mind.

>> Winkey+R+notepad+enter

I just tried that, and it took me two seconds - about as long as I think it would take to click a pane and an edit box(if I understood that correctly).

Well wincement you finally wrote a positive comment . Are you" withdrawing" in addiction type terms from Microsoft ? There is another world out there . Expand your horizons : Google is merely one of many. You are certainly much younger than I which is good ..but as I have , you have not seen the evolution of the personal computer and the internet . keep writing your comments to betanews. Obviously you are knowledgeable regarding computers and operating systems . Is that enough ?

It takes you just as long to open notepad, enter your information, save it, and organize it, as it does to click something, type and be done? (GDS auto-saves). Riiiiiight.

I don't want it open all the time. I want screen real estate maximized for the task at hand. I don't want informational pointers always on my screen when I don't need to look at them most of my day. Having that on my screen all the time is an issue with my sanity, functionality, etc.

Notepad: on 100% of windows boxes.

Google GDS? nil, until I install it. If it ain't there, I won't use it.

Google GDS I can't save my note across the Network, or see it full screen and paste a lot of notes.

Google GDS might not be there, like a good friend, when I need it most.

But you can save it across the network as a text file, you can open it to a larger panel, and so on.

Hmm...you're right, that took between 15 and 20 seconds excluding writing the notes.

agrees just a way for more of Google to get inside your computer. I like google for search engine purpose.

the bloated garbage sotware report.
AOL takes the lead followed by MSN, but wait we see a new commer.

ummm.... thanks.

I think?

When I downloaded the beta version of desktop 2.0, it had some pretty vile bugs with IE not launching windows properly...
Did anyone else have that problem with the beta? If so, did they fix it for this release?

I did not have that problem at all with the beta. What exactly did you do to cause the problem.

I am not a big fan of google, I am a Big MSFT fan, with that said this product looked great in beta and I expect it to be even beter. I am surprised I have not heard when MSFT will release their sidebar to Windows XP.

To be perfectly honest, if you have a good enough file structure that you're comfortable with, why do you need to search for files?

The main reason is becuase sometimes you'll be looking for that file that you last opened 6 months ago and despite how good a file structure you have you never really can remember properly where it was. So by using a desktop search it makes what used to take a long process into a few seconds of searching. I know I've found it very useful when I need to get an old project and I'm not too sure of where I last saved it.

Also it's more conveniant to just search instead of going through multiple directories. Again it's really based on use. Some people don't have that many files so there's no need. Other people have loads and loads of files, like myself, and need this to help.

Yes, but Windows has a built in search that works just fine.

Just fine for what? Windows' built in search is terrible, which is why so many other options have been made and why Microsoft is completely rewriting it for Vista. XP's search is slow, can't look inside the majority of files, can't search e-mail or other file types, has an annoying dog that pops up, etc., etc.

Agreed. I just like to be organised so I don't
lose things, that's all.

Ok, so you are saying that everytime I have searched for a file that I didn't find it? It has worked fine for four years now and it will keep right on finding the files I tell it to find. Of course I know where I keep most of my files. I don't need it to search over the email as you put it, Outlook has a search for this. The dog is easy to turn off.

I'm usually the one using or looking for a better third-party alternative to just about every built-in Windows applet, and most people would refer to me as "anti- MS", but in the case of file searching I have to agree.

Despite the fact that I have many, many more files than most home users would ever have, I almost never have any difficulty finding any of them. A well organized directory structure and a good memory have worked with the built-in Windows search to yield almost perfect results.

And I can't see wasting screen space on a sidebar either. Scratch pad? My PIM provides one. Weather, stocks, scores? All already just a click away via browser bookmarks.

I don't for one second dispute that this thing may be of use to someone else, or that they have a right to use it. I say only that for me, such applications always seem wasteful and pointless.

Google is a fine search engine, but I've yet to be impressed by their software (even Picassa) enough to actually use it.

WinXP's search feature actually broke many things from Win2k's that make doing several things impossible. I can't remember what offhand, but I know there were a lot of pissed programmers that could no longer perform certain searches(file types or something?) which spawned this flurry of dozens of indexing/search programs.

It may work fine, but it's dang slow. I can't stand waiting for a Windows search. GDS gave me results in milliseconds all 2 times I used it. Yeah... haven't used it much, but it was useful those two times lol.

This is just how rumors get started Kramy!