The Google Desktop has just been updated to 2.0.
According to their site:
Google Desktop doesn’t just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).
We’ve also improved your desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. We’ve also extended our Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.
My favorite so far is the built-in Outlook plugin to search through my email. Version 1.0 of GDS first came out with the Outlook email search. That should have been a big hint to Microsoft that its Outlook search sucks and to have fixed it or added it to their version of desktop search. Alas, Google has beaten Microsoft in the Outlook search game.
Another feature that I like is the sidebar. The amount of real-estate it consumes is debatable, but watching my favorite blog news appear on the right as they are posted is a treat. My stock quotes, weather, news all update in “internet” real time.
The sidebar also integrates with my Gmail and Outlook email account so I can see incoming mail subjects as they arrive.
If you haven’t tried Google Desktop Search, this 2.0 version is definitely worth your download.
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