Yahoo Desktop Search (beta)

CNET editors' take

• Reviewed by:
  Jeff Bertolucci
• Edited by:
  Robert Vamosi
• Reviewed on: 03/21/2005
• Released on: 01/11/2005

Yahoo Desktop Search is based on X1 Desktop Search, a speedy desktop file finder that sells for about $75 and is geared for the enterprise market. Fortunately for home and small-business users, Yahoo gives its version away free. Yahoo Desktop Search includes an excellent viewer that displays the contents of files and e-mail before you open them, contains an integrated audio/video player, and performs lightning-quick searches. Unfortunately, our public beta version was buggy and crashed frequently when launching or closing. That said, we still like Yahoo Desktop Search's potential.

Upside: Download (via DSL) and installation of Yahoo Desktop Search took less than two minutes in our tests. Once installed, the app immediately began indexing every file, e-mail, and e-mail attachment on our computer. On slower computers--such as those with less than 512MB RAM--indexing may hamper performance, particularly when several other applications are open. On our test system, a 2GHz Celeron with 512MB, the performance hit was negligible.

The Yahoo interface is intuitive. Simply type a word or phrase in the Search window, then click one of several query buttons, including E-mail, Attachments, Files, and Music. Yahoo immediately lists all hits in the left pane and highlights the matching words in orange. The right pane is a viewer that displays the contents of each highlighted file. We found Yahoo's viewer superior to the one in Copernic Desktop Search, our Editors' Choice. When displaying PowerPoint files, for instance, Yahoo showed all images and backgrounds, while Copernic showed only the slide text. Yahoo Desktop Search also adds a toolbar to Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, making it easy to perform e-mail and attachment queries.

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