Windows Desktop Search (WDS) is the software that enables information workers to quickly find and retrieve e-mail, documents and files on a PC and corporate network. Windows Desktop Search is free with your Microsoft Windows License.
Windows Vista includes built-in desktop search capabilities. If you are running Windows Vista, you do not need this software.
The Windows Desktop Search client offers key benefits for end users, including:
Find Information Fast: You can find the information you need from the thousands of documents and e-mail located on your PC in seconds, improving your productivity.
Search Across Many File Types: Finds results from common file types (such as e-mail, Office documents, images, video, .pdf) with one tool.
Search from Familiar Interfaces: Enables you to quickly initiate searches from the Windows desktop, Outlook or Microsoft Internet Explorer, offering familiarity, convenience and ease of use.
Privacy Protection: Adheres to Windows security and privacy model and doesn’t index sensitive data such as temporary Internet files and cache.
Polite Indexing: File index is built and updated during idle time so user productivity and system performance are not affected.
If you ask me, this is a jab at search leader Google. Microsoft is attempting to beat the competition by using the age old technique of bundling.
Usabiity Tweeks:
Windows Vista includes some small usability tweaks. These tweaks make the GUI easier to use in some cases, and harder in others.
The first example is installing drivers. Installing drivers is never a fun experience in Windows, and hardware installation wizards have been anything but smart over the years. Windows Vista's hardware installation is smart enough to differentiate among .INF files and look in multiple subdirectories. That means it can search for the right drive installer in a large directory housing a large collection of subdirectories, each with drivers for different hardware, and find the correct one and install it automatically. The feature doesn't even require Vista-class drivers. Excellent feature if you ask me.
The second is a bit of whining. But it serious is a nusiance. In Vista, when you go to rename a file in any container object (such as a folder window or a File Open dialog), and you attempt to rename that file by any method, Vista no longer highlights the entire filename by default. It highlights only the characters before the period and file extension. Think of the millions of times filenames you've changed in Windows. Most of the time, you don't even want to change the extension at all. But you ended up either carefully selecting just the first part of the filename or selecting it all and just retyping the extension. There is always a better way, but it's so insignificant that complaining isn't worthwhile. You just endure things like that. It's amazing to me how much a little change like this makes you smile from the inside, though. Because it's noticeably easier to name files.
tags: Windows Vista, Search Engine, Google, software
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