Desktop Search and Me: or how two applications can coexist

For the past few months I have been using the Google Desktop Search application and have been generally satisfied with the results. What’s great about the program is that it crawls my information in the background and gives me results integrated with any Google search I perform. I particularly enjoy the new web cache feature that works with Firefox because I am able to find caches of pages that have disabled browser caching. This was useful in the recent Google X debacle because my browser didn’t cache it but there was a version or two from Google Desktop Search.

While GDS is great when integrated with Google web search, I prefer Ask Jeeves Desktop Search as a standalone product. What I absolutely love about Ask Jeeves Desktop Search is that it attaches itself to the “Open File” window allowing me to easily search for the file I am trying to open. It then opens the file I select in the application I am working in. And the Ask Jeeves Desktop Search lets you choose to index your information gradually or quickly. Definitely a must-have application.

One thing I would like to see is one of these desktop search applications allowing me to set it as the default Windows search service. Why do I have all these great applications and still have to use the built-in Windows search because I sometimes forget I have the other applications?