May
20
2005
Windows Desktop Search = Cool

With the launch of the Tiger OS X, Apple introduced Spotlight, a radical search engine designed for quickly finding things on your desktop.

I had no idea that Microsoft already has a nearly identical technology available free for Windows, called Windows Desktop Search.

Why didn’t I know this? Because it’s bundled with “MSN Search Toolbar“. I don’t really care for MSN, nor do I care for “toolbars”, especially since I generally use Mozilla, and methinks MSN Search Toolbar would not be designed for Mozilla. Besides, browser toolbars are usually just a attempt to get lazy people locked into a particular company’s web properties.

I saw Windows Desktop Search demonstrated on a co-worker’s computer, and I was blown away. It sits in your Windows taskbar and does an incremental search of your system as you type, just like Spotlight. It’s very sweet.

But bundling it with a stupid browser toolbar? That’s like bundling a free car with a set of steak knives. A great deal, but really dumb marketing.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2005 at 3:44 pm and is filed under General Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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