The Cynic Says……

Well, I just downloaded the MSN Desktop search beta the other day and I must say I’m very impressed. I don’t search my computer very often, but when I do I like for it to be quick… and this definitely fits the bill! It doesn’t integrate into your browser like google’s desktop search does. It integrates with the existing indexing service and gives you a nice little deskbar with which to search. You can also dock it as its own standalone toolbar or integrate it into your windows taskbar. It makes a great replacement for the address bar since you can also make aliases to launch programs with a few keystrokes. For example, I type “fx” and it launches firefox. I type “weather” and I have it set to go to the weather.com page for my zip code. Adding aliases is incredibly simple. All you do is type the @ symbol, then what you want to be able to type to make the alias (like “fx”) then a comma, then an equals sign, then the path to the program you want to launch. My firefox alias looked like this: @fx,=”c:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox.exe”. Pretty simple if you ask me. I have aliases setup for quite a few things and I love it. I have the deskbar floating, but not always on top so it doesn’t get in the way. I hit CTRL+ALT+M and it pops to the top so I can type in it. You can also search the web with it along with your own desktop. It comes with an IE toolbar, but I don’t care about that since I never use IE. I’d recommend checking it out. I’m not a big fan of MSN-branded stuff, but it seems to work pretty well so far.