Google Desktop 1.0: Known issues; Reducing system slowdown; Problems with Spotlight search results; uninstalling; more
[Published Friday, April 13th]
Known issues Note that there is a list of known issues with Google Desktop for Mac OS X posted on Google's support page. Among the more important points:
- Installation should be performed using an administrator account, otherwise problems may occur
- The system may be significantly slower during initial indexing
- When search output is sent to Firefox or Camino, the browsers will crash if the display is set to anything other than "Millions" of colors in the Display pane of System Preferences. Safari is unaffected by this bug
- Spotlight Privacy settings are currently ignored on external volumes
Reducing system slowdown Indexing can take hours or days, and even after it is finished indexing, Google Desktop can take a heavy toll of on system resources causing significant slowdown in some cases.
One method for reducing system resource impact is removal of any third-party or unnecessary Spotlight mdimporter files from /Library/Spotlight.
Causing problems with Spotlight search results? It appears that in some cases, Google Desktop is interfering with Spotlight-based searches in various Mac OS X applications, including Mail.app and others.
If you are experiencing such an issue, you may want to try forcing Spotlight to re-index your startup drive by using the following steps:
- Launch the Terminal, located in Applications/Utilities and enter the following command to turn off Spotlight: sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name then press the return key.
- Next enter this command: sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1 and press return
- Physically remove the .Spotlight directories from the root of your hard drive with these commands: cd / (press return) then sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100 (press return)
Uninstalling Google Desktop In order to uninstall Google Desktop, launch the Google Updater application located, by default, in /Applications then click the expansion triangle next to My Software. Press the Uninstall button for Google Desktop.
No JavaScript in Camino Some users have reported a problem where JavaScript capabilities in Camino are disabled in the presence of Google Desktop. Uninstalling Google Desktop via the aforementioned instructions, then re-installing Camino generally resolves this issue.
Feedback on Google Desktop 1.0? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
I have not yet found a way to extend Spotlight to do that, so Google Desktop would be a boon if it could..
Thank you
I couldn't get Goggle Desktop to work at all, but I did manage to uninstall it. There's a freeware app called "EasyFind" available through VersionTracker that's fast, stable and finds hidden files either by name or with wildcards. Very nice little application. I have no connection with with that program, but it does work nicely for me. Google Desktop just sat there.
I thought that, but tried it anyway. Google just does it more comprehensively.
There is a wonderful in depth article about Google Desktop on the O'Reilly Network's MacDevCenter.com site. Access it <a href="http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2007/04/09/introducing-google-desktop-for-mac.html"> here</a>.
In short, the author of that article feels Google Desktop seems to be a little faster than Spotlight and feels it's searches are "smarter". It looks to me like the primary benefit is the ability to comprehensively search your GMail account off line.
However I don't like how intrusive it is. I don't like the resources it uses and I don't like that it uses Input Managers (there's a link in that article explaining Input Managers). So I'm choosing not to install it on my Mac.
However I wholeheartedly recommend the Windows version of Google Desktop for those who work on both platforms like I do (I have separate machines, I don't do Windows on my Mac). Google Desktop for Windows (at least XP) is far and above the built in Windows search.
I had to remove Google Desktop from my iMacG5. I found it was disrupting the normal operation of the machine, stopping some programmes from opening properly. That is a pity because it is a very effective search engine. I hope future versions will be less disrutive.
[Ditto for Spotlight.]
The scary thing is that is exactly how Apple and Google (and MS with their new search in Vista) promote it. I went to one of Apple's big release events for Tiger when it first came out and the words they used scared the heck out of me. I recall one sysadmin raising his hand and asked the engineer if he would please never repeat that statement again to end users. What happened to the days of making users responsible for using a documents directory? Being able to search for content is great, but telling people they can save wherever they want just leads to poor file management and makes backing up a nightmare.
- by Bob Jacobson July 2, 2008 1:28 PM PDT
- I finally deleted this memory hog and reduced my typical CPU load from 80-90% to 4-20%. What a relief, the CPU cooled down and my fans stopped twisting themselves off their mounts! From what I experienced, Google Desktop could do real harm to Macs.
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(10 Comments)I'm now running a G4/15 PowerBook Al, 1.67GHz, 2G RAM, OS 15.4.1, Camino browser.
Bob
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Bob Jacobson
Tucson, AZ
G4/15 Al Powerbook
(1.67 GHz/1 GB RAM, FireWire)
OS 10.4.11 (Tiger)