I was so fond of google desktop, but then it made my system real slow, in day to day work I often have to look up files on my computer, but then it takes a lot of time. And it is highly likely that my computer organization is as messed up as my room. I have also tried the Window Vista’s Search 4.0 Preview.

Bringing things in order is not easy and seriously not many of us even want things in order. In such a situation the best way to find things (that we stored months back and now wasting time on retrieving it) is to use this Quick File Search utility called Locate 32. And believe this is lite!

It doesn’t consume too much of system resources and runs pretty fast. The simple tool indexes all the files on your computer and supports all the versions of Windows. The shell integration allows Locate32 to work in console and provide command-line search functionality that other desktop search applications lack.

It is an open source search utility so the developers can also derive synergy from it by creating applications based on it. It is not as comprehensive as Google Desktop Search but it’s definitely a safer option because it’s completely isolated from data on your computer.

Locate32 has some shortcomings too just as the other desktop search utilities. The application is always running in the background and constantly uses system resources, one major problems with the always-active desktop search tools.

Locate32 cannot search the contents of files or e-mails, so you can’t use the tool to search for a phrase inside of a message, like you can on Google Desktop or Windows Search.

However, Locate32 is completely isolated to your system, you don’t have to worry about any data, non-personally identifiable or otherwise, being evaluated by some third party.

Locate32 is completely free, and supports just about every version of Windows, including Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista.

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