Two big companies, Google and Microsoft, have recognized the demand and released their desktop search products, Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search respectively. The two desktop search applications, while vastly different in implementation and usability, are based on the same idea: full-text indexes of all searchable content and blazing-fast, almost instant search among huge inventories. Both tools make it possible to locate files, text documents and other resources by their names, text strings, or other data such as the FROM: or SUBJ: fields for emails.

And there lies the problem. The two applications have their own different ways of querying for anything but simplest searches. Looking for something more complex than a file name or text string requires that you know either system's internal query language, and even then it's not always possible to find exactly what you want.

Halftone Search by removes these inconveniences. With this add-on, you can use either Google Desktop or Windows Desktop Search to locate almost any type of information on your PC. No need to learn the query syntax of either product, and no limitations as to what you can and cannot find! With Halftone Search, you can even index and search files compressed in archives such as ZIP and RAR and containers such as MHT and CHM. You can run full-text searches inside of archives, too.

Using Halftone Search for finding resources on your PC is much simpler than using either Google Desktop or Windows Desktop Search without it. Being more user-friendly than Windows Desktop Search, Halftone Search offers Google Desktop something they have not been granted from the beginning: a real search application instead of HTML-only interface. Windows Desktop Search can use the IFilter interface to select which files to index and search.

Halftone Search provides search results in a conveniently organized window with the ability to specify exactly the types of information you'd like to see by picking the columns. If you were looking for an image, your search results can be presented in a form of thumbnails - not just a file list.

More information on Halftone Search along with a free evaluation version are available at

SUMMARY:

With Halftone Search, you can use either Google Desktop or Windows Desktop Search engine to search for practically any type of information on your PC.