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Microsoft Finalizes Its Desktop Search Software

Posted by Zonk on from the nope-no-influences-here-none-at-all dept.

Smelly Toejam writes "After a five month testing phase, Microsoft has released a final version of its much hyped desktop-search software. Major updates cited include the ability to pick and choose which files to index, and how often." From the article: "Microsoft is vying for new credibility in the multibillion-dollar Web search market dominated by Google and Yahoo--and central to its campaign is the desktop. With its Longhorn launch slated for next year, Microsoft is developing enhanced search software that combines navigation for Web and desktop files straight from the operating system. The toolbar is a step toward that goal."

19 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Just remember by killmenow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Disable this on your IIS servers, mmmkay...

  2. Re:How does it compare to Google's desktop search? by Stibidor · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's been a while since I tried Google's tool, so my memory of it is surely a bit foggy. The two differences I've noticed so far are:
    1. Google runs in the web browser on a special port, MS runs in Explorer, Outlook as toolbars.
    2. Maybe I haven't played around with it enough yet, but unfortunately, the MS tool doesn't seem to be capable of showing me where in the file it found my search term! It shows me a list of files it thinks are relevant, with lovely little stars indicating the level of relevance, but it doesn't show me where in the (potentially large) file, the term I searched for appears. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
    --
    http://nerdfortress.com/
  3. Re:How does it compare to Google's desktop search? by CharlieHedlin · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Google Desktop search seems to be faster and index a wider variety of content. It also has the ability to view cached files in html form.

    The MSN Desktop search seems to do a better job of keeping the index consistant and up to date for Outlook. I haven't used it long enough to say. The interface looks nicer, but it is really poor as far as functionality.

    I am currently using MSN because the Google index would keep getting screwed up, but if they fix that I will switch back for sure.

  4. Ars review by enjahova · · Score: 5, Informative

    Arstechnica has a nice review of all the windows desktop search tools:

    http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/desktop-search .ars

    Of course it has the beta of the MS search, but a pretty good guide I think.

    --
    "how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
  5. Linux Desktop Search Alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I've been using CollectiveCortex on Linux and it works very well. A lot of useful tools built in for free which actually cost a fair bit in competing products. Should be a revamped new version out shortly apparently.

  6. related resource - deskbar shortcuts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    hi

    you can find a whole slew of deskbar shortcuts for microsoft desktop search at:
    deskbarshortcuts.com

    peace

  7. Re:It's about time. by Dr.+Mutex · · Score: 3, Informative
    Microsoft should have had this built-into the OS a long long time ago!

    They did, it's been in the OS since Windows 2000. It's called Indexing Service. Most people never learn how to use it, though.

  8. Re:Link to the Google Toolbar by muszek · · Score: 2, Informative
    "Requires Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Internet Explorer 5.5+"

    from toolbar.google.com. There's no point to waste a ff visit to direct them to a page that has no use for them.

  9. permissions flaw and other Spotlight problems by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Informative
    This doesn't seem to generate much of a performance hit, so I wonder why Microsoft is going for a different approach? Apple's seems to make more sense.

    As a mac user (not "Mac nutjob"), there are several caveats to Spotlight and its indexing.

    • there can't be a one-to-many relationship, ie, no database files. This is why you don't have any access to Entourage email. Apple said "redo your storage of email", MS said "take a flying leap". I'm with MS on this one. You don't tell people to redesign their data storage because your architecture was short-sighted.
    • Indexing is pretty clever about waiting until things are quiet (and happens quickly enough even on a 1Ghz G4 powerbook) but it doesn't come with a set of built-in rules of what NOT to index, so things like web browser cache files are included in the index. If you're on battery power, that's wasted CPU cycles and disk I/O.
    • You can't exclude directories you don't have write permission to. Want to exclude all of /Developer, /Library, and /System, because most likely you won't be looking for files in there? Too bad.
    • The Spotlight index tends to get extremely fragmented within a week or two of initial use, even if there's plenty of free disk space and gigabytes of contiguous disk. It's not clear why, but after two weeks, the two spotlight index files were in over 400 fragments. A quick "on line" defrag with one of several defrag tools will fix this and it doesn't seem to get as bad from then on.
    • Smart Folders in both the Finder and programs like Mail are half-assed. For example, I made a Smart Folder that was "every file opened today", which worked -mostly- OK (there was stuff opened by the system, but that's OK). Except then I couldn't sort by atime, no matter what view I picked. It gets worse- you can't use nested conditions like you can in, say, Eudora or Firefox. Nor can you do a smart folder on arbitrary headers. It gets even worse- you can search for "read" as a boolean, not 'status' being either read, unread, replied, or forwarded. Want a smart folder that contains messages today you haven't replied to? Tough shit.
    • Want to see more than the document name? Have to click on the + every single time. There's no "show more info" view.
    • Spotlight isn't attached to any program, which makes managing its widow a royal pain in the ass.

    In short, Spotlight is nice, but infuriatingly dumbed down more than usual.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  10. Re:It's about time. by AlexTheBeast · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you name your text files with non-standard extensions (not *.txt), then the default search leaves them alone. Here's the hack one would need to get XP's default search to search all files...

    XP: Have Windows Perform Word or Phrase Searches within Unknown Filetypes

  11. Re:COMPETITION is good by DrPizza · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except that Google could provide the exact same level of integration as MS have, if they so desired. MSN Desktop Search uses documented APIs in documented ways. The extensibility interfaces it uses are open to anyone who wants to use them. If Google's search doesn't use them, that's no-one's fault but Google's.

    You'll further notice that the search bar isn't integrated into the OS. It's a separate download from msn.com. It's doing nothing that third party developers couldn't do.

  12. Copernic Destop Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I've been using this for the past half year and it works fantastically well. It had all the features that was missing from Google.

    It integrates very well with Outlook, supports firefox, is extensible by allowing the addition of new filetypes, very fast, and has a slick interface. I must use it dozens of times a day.

  13. Re:It's about time. by DrPizza · · Score: 2, Informative

    No and no.

    It wasn't there in NT 4. The NT Option Pack provided Index Server (or whatever its exact name is, something along those lines) as one of its components. The NTOP was an add-on released a long time after NT 4 itself.

    Index Server is exensible using an API known as IFilter. Third-party filters allow the indexing of, for example, PDFs.

    The IFilter API is used by various MS search tools. Index Server is one. "MSSearch" (used for SQL Server and Exchange full text indexing) is another. SharePoint Portal Server's FTS tool is another.

    The engines of these products are all pretty similar; all seem to use BM25 as their ranking algorithm.

    However, they're all different, and they all store their indices and configuration information slightly differently.

    It's long surprised and dismayed me that MS hasn't built into Windows a decent front-end to Index Server, because it's actually a very effective and useful tool. It's just a pain in the ass to configure and use.

  14. Re:It's about time. by Kevin_Peters · · Score: 2, Informative

    Clearly, you haven't tried Beagle.

    --
    The music is all around us. I can hear it. Can you?
  15. Re:It's about time. by jez9999 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Windows XP's default search function won't find text in the majority of file I tell it to search through... it's ridiculous.

    Right. That's because of this piece of stupidity from someone as MS: Using the "A word or phrase in the file" search criterion may not work

    ... and it's why I always use Windows Grep to search through a bunch of text files. Actually, Windows search worked identically to Windows Grep back in Win9x.

    --
    == Jez ==
    Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  16. It actually supports multiple users, for one thing by Kagami001 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry, this is more of a Google search bash than a comment on MS's, since none of the other desktop search utilities have this problem, either:

    "Google Desktop Search can be installed under only one Windows username per computer"

    Pretty sad, really. Google may produce nice web apps, but they apparently have no clue how to program for Windows.

    Maybe they're not bothering to learn Windows programming because everybody will be using GoogleOS in a few years anyway. :)

  17. How does it compare with Copernic? by theurge14 · · Score: 0, Informative

    Google Desktop Search pales in comparison. Copernic really deserves to be mentioned more than it has.

  18. Re:Whoopee! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The answer is yes... http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050 504012104186&query=spotlight

  19. I just used it, and its quite good.. by dwipal · · Score: 2, Informative

    So M$ bashing aside, i installed the app. and used it, and i found it quite good. Its too early to say a lot, but have surely made me switch atleast for evaluating it.

    Here are the main advantages i found over google desktop search:

    1. Its an application, so dosent open browser pages for search.
    2. It has search-as-you-type
    3. It has an awesome support for shortcuts, i have programmed all my firefox keywords in search desktop
    4. It has a very good feature for previewing the documents in search application itself, so you dont have to open it at all (Preview of office docs. is disabled by defualt, u will have to add the extensions).
    5. You can change the default web search engine to google, so dosent suck that much. It also dosent pop IE, uses the default browser.
    6. You can start applications from it by creating shortcuts.

    So basically, this feels more like a decent "application" than just a "web page", and has a few really neat tricks for keyboard users.