After a few stutters, I finally managed to get Y! Desktop Search up and running. Like any geek, I dove into the options dialog first and tweaked the settings to my liking (by adding a few extensions, turning off the splash screen,etc). The indexing is quite fast (faster than MSN and much faster than Google's). I've been using it for almost a day now,and I've got to say that I'm very impressed.
Verdict: It totally rocks
Is it better than Google's desktop search? Most definitely
Is it better than MSN? Hmm...I would say. But read on.
The Good Stuff
I'm not going to bore you with a rundown of the features - you can find that by searching on Google or Technorati. X1's product was one of the best in the market and that maturity is evident in this product. Though Yahoo is calling this a beta, this is evidently a very mature product ..and one that is bound to get the MSN and Google engineers working overtime.
The list of file types indexed is quite comprehensive (there were quite a few extensions I've never heard of before). The type-ahead search is awesome. Google has nothing like it and MSN's is limited to the MSN toolbar on the taskbar alone. The preview feature is also quite useful. It's a more 'geek' product than either Google's or MSN's. A non-geek might get intimidated by the UI the first time but power users would feel right at home.
The Bad Stuff
Finding fault with this is quite difficult. I personally miss two things from MSN - the toolbar in the taskbar and the shortcut feature (which I use extensively).I also miss the context menu integration in MSN. Right-clicking on a search result in MSN's search would give you all the context menu items that Windows Explorer does. However, the lack of these features is not a show-stopper and should be quite simple to add.
The Big Question
Is it better than MSN's Desktop search? Though I would say yes, I would say it is going to come down to a question of personal preferences. Yahoo's product may be technically superior,I personally prefer MSN's UI -but other people may not. Having said that, I'm running Yahoo on my desktop and have shelved MSN for the time being. As both these products come out of beta, it is going to an exciting time for all of us.