Portnoy's Computer

Alex's PC: I never thought it would come to this. I mean, me, of all PCs, in analysis! Of all the well-adjusted, smooth-running computers in the office, I was the best. Why they mothballed me for analysis is way beyond me! I know I've been crashing recently, and they've certainly had me working hard these past few months, but it certainly is no reason to have to submit to a shrink, of all things!

Now I know that as an analyst, doctor, your job is to are going to try to probe way down deep into the psyche in order to find out what makes people (or computers) tick� but believe me when I tell you that what you see is what you get. I make sure to dump my e-mail caches, my Internet history, temp files - I'm as clean as a whistle. In other words, I don't come into this process with any hidden baggage. You are not going to find any deep, dark hidden secrets on my hard drive.

I suppose you'll want to hear about my parents - that's where you people always start, right? Well, I'm a computer - I don't have parents, you ninny! My processor chip was fabricated on a beautiful spring morning at a nice, clean Intel factory in Ireland with a lovely view of the green hills. So there!

Anyway, I'm too intelligent to be analyzed, and I heard that you can't analyze smart, Pentium 4 computers unless they want to be analyzed (or is that hypnotized?). Go ahead, ask me any question you want - I got all the answers right in my RAM cache! Yep - I am a perfectly healthy, 5 GB - that's an amazing 5,000 MB - of RAM, 80 GB hard drive Pentium 4 PC that can handle the toughest, most ornery software. I am the last computer that needs to be sitting on this couch! What do you think of that?

Oh, I see - you're one of those doctors who insist that the subject do all the talking. No problem; I've got all day. What do you want to know about - my URL history? The e-mails they've sent out from my copy of Outlook Express? Those annual financial statements in the Excel spreadsheet sitting on my Drive D:? I'll be glad to share anything you want just to get this session overwith. All I have to do is run my copy of Google Desktop, the new search tool that makes searching for the files on a PC as quick and Googly-efficient as searching for information on the Web!

Google Desktop Search, as you may have heard, is a new tool that has, just barely a week out on the market, gained much notoriety for its ability to quickly search through the contents of a hard drive and check for a word or term that appears in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, folders, AIM chat sessions, Web pages you've visited, and Outlook/ Outlook Express e-mail. You download Google Desktop Search from its Web site (http://desktop.google.com) and install; your Google home page (http://www.google.com) will now display a new button called "Desktop," and when you type a term to search for in the Google search bar and click on the Desktop button, any occurrence of the term appearing on your computer - in a text or Word file, or an e-mail (even some that have been deleted, before they are overwritten) will appear on the results list!

Most interesting is the program's ability to search cached e-mails and Web pages. As you probably know, a backup image of a searched Web page gets stored in your computer's Internet cache, unless you specifically clear that cache out. So if you have anything to hide (which I don't, doctor), make sure you clean this cache out regularly. Desktop Search is a beta program still in its infancy, and it shows; for example, it will display terms from pop-up or Web banners associated with pages in your cache that the program searches. Some users have complained of incompatablities between the program and other software and occasional "blackouts" where it just seems to stop functioning.

The program does its magic by "indexing" your hard drive, building its own library of images and text it has found on your drive. In other words, you may still be able to retrieve data from files, Web pages and e-mail you have already deleted! Yes, I know that some people consider this a security risk - after all, if a stranger gets access to your PC s/he could potentially uncover sensitive information about you - but you can set Desktop Search to exclude folders or file types; you set the level of security you want. Windows, of course, has a built-in Find tool that can also search for text within files and folders, but it is far slower and doesn't do e-mail and Web pages like Google's product. And the speed difference is remarkable - what Window's Find takes nearly three minutes to dig up took Desktop Search approximately 5-10 seconds to report (after the program fully indexes the hard drive). If you write a lot or have years of memos and documents in your computer, Desktop Search is a real boon.

It may be powerful, but Desktop Search is also very easy to use. The results of the search (Google claims) never leave the bounds of your computer - although you never know these days just how much stock to put into these "guarantees." By default, the program's Web site says, "Google Desktop Search sends us non-personal data about how you're using the program, along with reports if it ever crashes," but you can opt out of the reporting if you want. Still, it's a great way to "rediscover" the information you know is in there but can't quite find..

For example, doctor, I did a search for "memory," and found lots of interesting results. There were help pages for various pieces of software that include information on memory usage in their manuals - Wordstar takes up a lot, apparently - as well as information about older PC models. Everything seemed to be in apple-pie order.

But wait - what's this? A memo from Central Management about an old computer that needs to be put out of service? "Dear Alex: Regarding your PC - get rid of that old hunk of junk! It's got 500 MB of memory, a bare bones hard drive. Get with modern times and dump that Pentium 100 you've been working with! We've got a nice, new computer for you that will make you a lot more productive. If you want to keep your old computer, make sure you give it a thorough upgrade. That's an order."

Hmm. Now that's very strange, doctor. As far as I know, I'm the only computer Alex has been working with for the last 10 years. We've been nothing but loyal to each other, and I don't recall any other computer around the office that fits the description in this letter. Unless�

Oh, no! I just checked the spec sheet text file that I came with - the first non-system file ever written to my hard drive! According to this document, the Pentium 1 (not 4) with an 80 MB (not GM) hard drive and 500 (not 5,000) MB memory is me!

How could this be, doctor? I've been fooling myself for my entire existence! How could I have been so wrong about everything? Oh, G-d bless that Alex - he could have thrown me on the junk heap, but he wanted to save me - so he sent me in for an upgrade. And that means that you, doctor, are no doctor - you're a technician who is going to make me useful to society. Oh, thank you, thank you! Please - do anything you need to do. Just save my life!

System Administrator Spielvogel: Now we may to begin.

Note: Download Google Desktop Search from http://desktop.google.com for free; requires Windows XP or Windows 2000, service pack 3 or better. Some users have reported incompatability problems with some software, most notably Mozilla based browsers, like Firefox (www.mozilla.org/products/firefox). I would recommend disabling any download manager before trying to download/install the program. All characters/copyrights property of the copyright holder.

January 30

2004

David Shamah

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