Desktop Search Round-up: Search Engine Power for Your PC MSN Desktop Search Joseph Moran
MSN Desktop Search
Arguably, the limited abilities of Windows' built-in search tool is the raison d'etre for all these third-party search offerings, and not to be outdone, Microsoft is offering its own search tool, MSN Desktop Search.
However, don't look for MSN Desktop Search on your next visit to Windows Update — you must instead download it from beta.toolbar.msn.com. Plus there's a significant catch with the current download — unfortunately, Microsoft has chosen not to offer desktop search as a standalone application.
To get the desktop search tool, you must download the complete Microsoft Toolbar Suite, which includes various other capabilities such as a browser toolbar with a pop-up blocker, form filler, and password manager. (For purposes of this article, we'll focus only on the search tool.) System requirements for the toolbar suite are Windows XP or 2000 with Service Pack 4 and Outlook 2000/Outlook Express 6 or better.
MSN Desktop Search can index files from Microsoft Office 2000 or later, Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail messages, and various graphics, audio, and video formats. It will also index Web pages saved to the hard drive, but not the contents of the IE cache or IM chats (including Windows Messenger). And while MSN Desktop can't index compressed files at this point, it can search within PDF files with an optional plug-in module. Unlike AskJeeves Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search won't index files belonging to users other than the one that installed the utility.
Interface
The need to install a browser toolbar just to get the desktop search capability can be bothersome, especially if you're already using a toolbar you like such as the ones from Google or Yahoo! Unlike those toolbars, though, the MSN Toolbar also gets added to Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and the Windows Taskbar (in the form of the "Deskbar"). And although disabled by default, there's an option to additionally add one for Windows Explorer.
This puts the MSN Toolbar essentially anywhere you would need it, but if you begin to experience toolbar overload or want to cut down on browser clutter, you can choose to hide it in Internet Explorer or any of the other locations.
When you enter a search term into MSN Desktop Search, a browser window appears that lists the relevant files or messages along with vital statistics such as date, size, author, and location. MSN Desktop Search also displays the total number of items found and lets you narrow down your findings to a specific category (i.e. documents) with one mouse click. It doesn't, however, give you any indication as to how many of the items are from each category, so you won't, for example, know if any of the items are in the music category unless you click it to check.
As with Yahoo! Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search displays results as you type, which may save time (and typing) when searching on long phrases. Unlike the Yahoo! or Ask Jeeves utilities, however, MSN Desktop Search doesn't offer a preview window, so you must double-click an entry to view more than a two-line abstract of the contents.
As would befit a Microsoft product, MSN Desktop Search offers the tightest Outlook integration of all the search utilities. In addition to Outlook e-mail and contacts, MDS also indexes the Calendar, Tasks, and even Notes.
MSN Desktop Search doesn't give you a whole lot of control over its indexing process. The main choice is to decide whether to index the entire hard disk or simply the My Documents folder; alternatively, you can dictate specific locations to be included in the MDS index. On the other hand, you can't specify which file extensions are included in the index. Similarly, you can't control when indexing occurs, other than to pre-empt it by "snoozing" for anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours.
MSN Desktop Search's numerous toolbars make searching easy, but we'd like the offering better if it offered a preview pane and a bit more control over what it indexes. That said, if you're looking for a search tool bundled with other useful utilities, MSN Desktop Search is a worth a look. And if you're likely to want to search through old Outlook appointments or tasks as much e-mails or documents, then MSN Desktop Search's tight integration with Outlook will probably make it the best choice for you.
Pros:Searches both the Web and your desktop; new Deskbar toolbar for quick searching from Explorer; toolbar add-on for Outlook; indexes a wide variety of file formats, including Outlook Calendar, Tasks, and Notes; ability to search within PDF files (via an optional plug-in module)
Cons:Lacks a preview window, sparse configuration options, must download entire MSN Toolbar to get desktop search capability, only available for Windows XP/2000 users, features a toolbar for Outlook but not one for Outlook Express, doesn't index Web pages viewed with non-IE browsers such as Firefox, doesn't currently offer support for indexing IM chats or compressed files
