MSN Desktop Search review (or Microsoft vs Google )
It doesn't make much sense when you're late to a party, and in this case, it is the 'Write a review for MSN Desktop Search' party :) First of all, go and read up Jan's excellent post as well as Scoble's collection of links..and more of his links.
There's not much for me to cover that all those folks haven't covered already - so I'll just give my own verdict. So what is the answer to the big question - who has the better desktop search product (taking into consideration that both of them are beta products and may change radically) ?
Answer: Microsoft. Totally. MSN Desktop Search takes Google Desktop Search to the cleaners.And here's why (apart from the major points covered by all those reviews)
Rich client
Google's spartan UI works well for the web but it doesn't make much sense to have a html interface on your desktop. For example,a lot of times, I search a file just to find out which folder it is in. In MSN Desktop search (as well as classic Windows search), you get the 'Open in containing folder' . Getting a context menu is a big,big thing. Google's problem is that there is only so far you can go with HTML. I doubt whether this problem can be fixed - GDS undergoing a radical transformation is doubtful at this point.
Toolbars
Once you install this, you see the MSN butterfly in every application you open ..almost. For a long time, I was using a combination of Google Deskbar and Google Desktop Search and cursing at the same time for not integrating them better. MSN has that integration - just type in a query in IE or Windows Explorer or your taskbar. Wherever.This is a big thing which Google should address as quickly as possible - integrate the deskbar and the desktop search ..or even merge them into one product.
Search as you type
This totally rocks. A lot of times, I get the result after the first few keystrokes - and I've started using it as a shortcut to accessing frequently used software like IE or VS.NET. Since Google has similar technology in Google Suggest, I think we might see this in a future version (though I doubt they would be able to reuse any work from Google Suggest).
Hackable
I'm shocked that Microsoft has a product that is more hackable than the equivalent product from Google. Adding shortcuts is a cinch in MSN desktop search while doing the same with Google deskbar is an adventure through UI dialogs. Another interesting thing is that MSN Desktop Search seems to leverage the IFilter (indexing services) functionality in Windows better than GDS(which uses the same thing). For example, if you install the PDF IFilter from Adobe, you instantly get the ability to search through PDFs in MSN while Google doesn't automatically pick it up. However, since both products would surely sport plug-in functionality soon, this may not make a big difference.
Polished
MSN Desktop search looks complete..polished and a good product. GDS looks ragged and unfinished in comparison. However, things should change as it comes out of beta.
However, not everything is all right with MSN - some things need to be fixed
The tyranny of the toolbar suite
For god's sake, dont call it 'MSN toolbar'. I hate it - and it confuses people. Stop bundling it with that toolbar which messes up IE. The first thing I did after installing it is turn off the MSN toolbar in IE alone - as Google's toolbar is way better. Plus, I still use Google for my web searching. I really hope Microsoft rebrands this as 'MSN desktop search' with the MSN toolbar being an optional extra.
Bad defaults
Some friends of mine mailed me saying that though MSN Desktop search had finished indexing, it couldn't find anything at all. I soon found out that this was because the default option indexes only your 'My documents' folder and e-mail - you have to explicity make it search through your entire harddisk. Now, this is incredibly stupid - hasn't Microsoft learnt that the 'My Documents' metaphor is dead? I rarely put anything there.
[Update: What I meant is that a lot of people don't use 'My Documents', rather than criticizing the metaphor itself. Thanks, Deepak :) ]
Even if you want to keep it 'My Documents' by default, then the this option dialog must popup the first time the program is run. Frankly, this is a silly oversight - and hopefully will get fixed.
One tip about turning on the checkbox on indexing e-mail attachments. My junk mail folder has a lot of mails with virus attachments as I don't let Norton watch email (for various reasons). Now, when MSN tried to read through these attachments, Norton AutoProtect kicked in (MSN seems to copy attachmetnts to its own 'temp' folder) and threw up some scary warnings. Now, here's the weird thing - once this happened, MSN totally stopped working. I didn't get any results for any search query and eventually wound up re-installing
Browser choice
Some people have been complaining about MSN imposing IE on them. I really don't understand their logic - do you complain when Windows Explorer uses IE? MSN desktop search uses IE in almost the same way that Windows Explorer does. In fact,when I used Spy++ on the results, I saw good old SysListView32. Frankly, seeing desktop search results in a browser window is something that Google hopes will catch on - but which I very much doubt.
One thing about this review - a lot of bloggers seem to have used it a couple of times and then made up their minds. But I really had to use it today - I had to find someone's phone number in 1.2 GB of mail - and MSN found it for me on the first try. Awesome! *It just works*
A couple of tips - as you might know, you can add shortcuts (called 'aliases') by typing a '@' followed by the shortcut name followed by the query/executable(similar to Google Deskbar - but the option of doing it without going through dialogs is awesome'. Here are the shortcuts I've set up so far.
Search Google - type in @google,http://www.google.com/search?q=$w . Now, you can just type 'google Sriram ' to see why I'm the most famous Sriram out there...err..well..maybe not.
Search Google groups - @gg,http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=$w
Search IMDB - @imdb,http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=$w
Search Wikipedia - @wikipedia,http://www.google.com/search?q=$w+site:en.wikipedia.org
Sign of things to come?
The first thing to strike me once I installed MSN desktop search was this. *For the first time, Google has an inferior search related product*. I wonder whether alarm bells are ringing at the Googleplex ..for it seems that Google doesnt have a monopoly in search anymore if this is any indication of how things are going.