Google Desktop - Yeah or Hey?

[TUS 373]

My new laptop is running Vista, and despite being a super dooper Core 2 Duo with 2Gb RAM, this O/S and Office 2007 have crippled by machine. I have uninstalled loads of software that came with the PC (Norton being a huge culprit) and given it a spring clean/ In all, its performance has increased 10X over. (Why do they put so much crap on new PCs?).

Anyway, there is a Google Desktop installer icon on the desktop. My thinking is that this now bundled with Vista.

While I understand the benefits of Google Desktop for finding info on my own PC, is it really worth it or will it again be a major resource hog and slow my PC down to a snails pace? I would be interested to hear about everyone else's experiences and whether it is useful, or just another piece of bloatware.

[ThePassenger]

Personally I'm a nay on this. Tried it, didn't like it. Although on both the M1710 and the Gen 2 the overheads for running it were negligable once past the initial 'index everything' phase.

I don't belive Microsoft ships Vista with the Google stuff (if anything they'd slap the MSN version on instead) so this is your OEM doing their 'value add' routine, same as all the other cruft you've found.

If you want maximum performance from Vista turn off Aero, the OS will in effect look like XP (or 2K if you turn on classic mode) that way none of the 3D stuff it's doing will happen; it's also a good trick for extending the battery run time of the machine.

[Munter]

My Dell laptop procedure was basically,
1)Start laptop.
2)Spend a few hours un-installing crap.
3)Install A/V.
4)Install office.
5)tell the Mrs not to install anything without permission.

Job done.

[Whitey]

Tus 373, what laptop did you buy? It sounds a similar spec to an Acer or Toshiba I'm going to buy with vista and office and with 2GB ram, maybe I should upgrade to 4GB straight away??

cheers
Whitey

[ThePassenger]

Whitey said:

Tus 373, what laptop did you buy? It sounds a similar spec to an Acer or Toshiba I'm going to buy with vista and office and with 2GB ram, maybe I should upgrade to 4GB straight away??

cheers
Whitey

2GB is fine, with laptops it's the HDD that slows everything down. Besides, most 32bit OS's will freak when they see 4GB of RAM

[mcflurry]

Munter said:

My Dell laptop procedure was basically,
1)Start laptop.
2)Spend a few hours un-installing crap.
3)Install A/V.
4)Install office.
5)tell the Mrs not to install anything without permission.

Job done.

Sounds like mine. 3 hours removing "trial period software" that made the machine run slower than a Citroen 2cv

[TUS 373]

Whitey said:

Tus 373, what laptop did you buy? It sounds a similar spec to an Acer or Toshiba I'm going to buy with vista and office and with 2GB ram, maybe I should upgrade to 4GB straight away??

cheers
Whitey

Sony VAIO FE31Z - now relaced by the FE41Z.

Reasonable machine, good spec, but crippled by too much guff on it from Sony.

[Whitey]

so now you have uninstalled the guff is it running at a decent speed?

Last thing I want is a new laptop that trudges along!

[ThePassenger]

Whitey said:

so now you have uninstalled the guff is it running at a decent speed?

Last thing I want is a new laptop that trudges along!

This is the 'value add' problem. In order to be different and give a perception of value for money to the idiots buying them companies slap on all this redundant crap. True they also get paid to do it but they get sales by selling a ready to rock unit so it's win-win for them.
Funniest one I ever saw was on a Compaq. Norton jumps up to say hello and so does McAfee. This was a while ago though.

Of course, you, me, anyone who's been around computers for a while realises that £399 or so for a (complete) machine that's got so much grunt it'd be equally at home in a rack doing mid-range DB work is an utter bargain; even if it arrives blank.

[SneakyNeil]

Dell gets paid to install all the crap on their new PC's, thats one of the reasons why they're so cheap. I budget an extra 1/2 an hour purely to uninstall all the free offer crap when I have to set Dells up though. HP business desktops are much better in this regard.

[holloway_dave]

Google Desktop on Vista is a waste of time really. Vista has built in indexing - so it already does what Google Desktop does. Installing Google Desktop would indeed be a waste of resources.

Try it out - click on Start, then type anything you like in to that little search box. You can find programs, documents whatever - it's quite usefull actually. (much like Google Desktop is on older Windows versions)

[Agent006]

Does google still upload tracking info from installations of Desktop?

[TUS 373]

Whitey said:

so now you have uninstalled the guff is it running at a decent speed?

Last thing I want is a new laptop that trudges along!

On the whole, yes, I believe. I was originally using XP Pro and Office 2003 on it. Now Vista Home premium and Office 2007. It is now slower.

I think that the Vista Aero interface is a big culprit. Disabling it has made th amchine quicker. Also, the Office 2007 is slow because I am using lots of Office 2003 files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc) and they are different file formats. Even opening up email in Outlook 2007 seems to take an age - but I think that may be due to the Avast Antivirus also having to get into some sort of compatibility mode in order to do a virus sweep when I open Outlook 2007 up.

Tinkering with new versions of Windows and Office is nice, but I am finding it hard to justify on productivity improvement grounds.

The Sony laptop is good though. I can't blame them for the software!

[Gateway Networks]

had a pair of HP nx7400's pass through my mitts ther other day, just needed to prep them for a client.

both running windows vista.. supprisingly there was no crap installed on it, unlike with dell machines i get in.

was a refreshing change.

thumbs up from me