Hewlett Packard also has a free recycling program and they proudly announce that more than 1.8 million HP inkjet cartridges were recycled in 2003. Unfortunately, for consumer, plastics and metal from HP cartridges are also disassembled and made into new products. Other components are “used to generate energy or are disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Canon offers its customers several options for recycling toner cartridges, including a single return option, an up-to-eight multiple return option, and a bulk return option. Whichever you choose, a shipping label can be downloaded directly from their website. Return shipping via UPS is pre-paid by company. It appears from many recycling and other eco-friendly programs displayed on their website, that Canon is a leader in environmental stewardship, however to date they have no recycling program in place for inkjet cartridges.

Lexmark’s recycling program is 100% free, as are other printer manufacturer recycling programs. Customers request a kit using an online order form. Lexmark pays postage both ways. However, there is one major difference between Lexmark’s program and programs of other print giants. Lexmark works with Planet Ark and Close Loop in Australia to ensure every collected cartridge is remanufactured or recycled. In addition, they have similar recycling programs in Latin American and South Africa. In Europe, every purchase of a Lexmark high-volume cartridge comes with a postage-paid recycling bag included. Now that’s closing circle!

But that is only beginning. I did a search for a phrase from an email to a new client as my first search in Google Desktop Search. A search for three words brought up several of emails we had exchanged, a (Word) contract with my client, cached web page with thumbnail image and yes, email I was looking for was among results. Very impressive and FAST!

The results page has links across top including "All - 3 emails - 2 files - 1 chats - 6 web history" with number of items that match each type of result in Google Desktop Search. If you click one of these links it shows results only in that file type or email results or web pages. All results display as "Cached" in browser windows, including Word documents, so that each software needn't open for that document! I love it!

If you click "emails" link from those in top of Desktop Search links, it lists only emails that turned up with search words in them, then click on any one of those results and it shows email in browser window. At bottom of that page it shows "< Older | Newer >" links to see them by date, then "View Entire Thread (2)" and "Reply", "Reply to All", "Forward", "Compose", "View In Outlook" links, which to me, makes Microsoft look awful! (Again, sigh . . .)

Why? That functionality is not even an option in Outlook or Explorer - even with so-called integration that has courts trying to separate Windows software bits out of operating system, and Microsoft claiming that would harm Windows! Google provides a powerful little bit of code that does all this as a stand alone tool which outperforms Windows search tools in speed and functionality in a 400k application! FOR FREE!

Google Desktop Search even performs searches in background when you search web with Google online and inserts their odd little Desktop Search logo beside first result on search results page - which is a result from your computer! The first time I saw this, I was unaware of how it was done and found it quite disturbing that my private hard drive was indexed by Google for all to see!

I looked closely at result and clicked "About" link beside my personal email description in Google Web Results page. It took me to a Google page that set my mind at ease by telling me that "These combined results can be seen only from your own computer; your computer's content is never sent to Google (or anyone else)." Whew! It's described in detail at:

On top of all this magical stuff, Google online search pages now have another link on page labled "Desktop" right next to Froogle link because it is inserted by browser if you have Google Desktop Search software installed on your own machine! (This browser integration does work in Firefox.)

There's a cute little item at bottom of Desktop Search that tells you "Searching 5,834 items" which references their "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages" online, and seems downright charming by comparison. If Google can search billions of pages online, then surely my few thousand files are nothing for them on my comparatively tiny machine, eh?

This all adds up to an incredibly fascinating bit of software that I simply cannot live without, now that I've seen it work.

I can't wait until Google turns their attention to helping me find my lost keys! Results page shows "Black jeans, laundry basket - Cached 3pm Sunday - 6 keys"