The free MSN Toolbar Suite, now available as a public beta, pulls together a number of related MSN search tools. It includes a new version of the popular MSN Toolbar for Internet Explorer, a toolbar integrated with Microsoft Outlook, and the MSN Deskbar, which indexes local files and appears in the taskbar. The online MSN Search beta gains a functional link to the local Desktop index.

MSN Deskbar indexes a variety of file types including Office document files, PDFs, HTML files, plain text files, and others—Google Desktop does not index PDFs. It also indexes audio, video, and picture file formats such as WMA, MP3, GIF, JPG, BMP and AVI, both by filename and by the metadata included in the files (e.g. EXIF information from JPGs).] Like Google Desktop, it does not index files contained within ZIP or other archives; X1 both indexes archived files and previews them. For Outlook users, it indexes all Outlook items including messages and their attachments, contacts, appointments, and tasks. Here it goes beyond X1 Search, which doesn't index appointments and tasks. It will index messages and attachments for Outlook Express users as well. MSN Desktop Search does require Microsoft Outlook 2000 or later, or Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0 or later, to index and search e-mail. It displays results in columnar form showing data fields like Subject and From, which is more than Google Desktop does—but it doesn't go as far as X1, which allows refining the search to specific fields.

As with all index-based search products, the initial indexing process takes time, especially if you choose to index all hard disks rather than the default of just e-mail and My Documents. To avoid slowing your work, it indexes only when the system is idle, though you can force it to "Index Now." On one test machine it processed 38,000 items in roughly 2½ hours and produced about 80MB of index files. The system tray icon's tooltip summarizes indexing progress; you can select Indexing Status from its menu for full details (unlike Google Desktop, which gives no indication of its progress) or tell it to "snooze" for a while and give you full computing power.

Instant Results

Like X1 search, the Deskbar shows results as you type. As soon as you've entered a few letters, you get results indexed on any word starting with those letters—Microsoft calls this "word wheeling." Where X1 narrows down from a list of all possible results, the MSN Deskbar shows the most likely results in different categories. A simple click will open a found item; clicking the More link in a category displays that category in the full MSN Search Results window. Since, unlike the word wheel, the full Search Results window does not support partial words, clicking More sometimes perversely yields fewer results—or none.

The Search Results window displays a rich view of the found items, including thumbnails where appropriate or a snippet of text showing search keywords in context, but nothing like the full preview X1 provides for most files. You can select one or more items and open them directly, sort the results by a variety of columns, or filter on a specific type of item. At the highest level, you can filter on Files, Outlook, Outlook Express, or the entire desktop. For each of these, a secondary set of filters further narrows the results. For example, with Outlook selected you can choose Email, Attachments, Meetings, Contacts, or Tasks. And you can jump to a Web-based search by clicking a link.

Our initial tests suggested that MSN Deskbar, like Google's desktop search, indexes encrypted Office documents. Further investigation revealed a weakness in the Office programs, not in the Deskbar, as described in our 2002 article "Plug a Security Leak" (read it here). In short, the first few lines of an encrypted file may be copied into the document properties Title field without encryption. Once we fully protected the documents, MSN Deskbar did not reveal their contents. And unlike Google, it does not maintain a cached version of file content, so it won't reveal earlier versions of files, encrypted or otherwise.

Deskbar Power

The MSN Deskbar also functions as a sort of supercharged Run dialog. Type a URL and hit Enter to open it in your browser, or enter a full pathname to launch a file. Prefix a program name with "=" to launch it directly, for example "=calc" to launch the Windows Calculator. It's also possible to define shortcuts that will launch more complex program commands or URLs.

From the Deskbar you can jump directly to MSN Search (beta) on the Web, selecting a full Web search, "Near Me," news, images, dictionary, encyclopedia, or a phone search in white or yellow pages. A menu provides links to other Microsoft services such as MSN Hotmail, MSN Money, and MSN Shopping. The Outlook toolbar also includes the menu of links to Microsoft services, but its search options are simpler: search in Outlook, the entire Desktop, or the Web.

As expected, the toolbar in Internet Explorer offers many ways to search the Web and desktop, and it links to Hotmail, MSN Messenger, and the new MSN Spaces blog site. For found Web pages it can, if you choose, highlight all search term hits—a separate Viewer window maps the terms within the page and lets you jump between instances. The toolbar now includes automatic form filling. You can preload it with address, credit card, and username/password information. Most useful is its ability to notice when you're logging on to a Web site and automatically grab the username and password. On your next visit just choose "Fill Out Form" from the menu (and supply the master password). Unlike RoboForm Pro, our standalone Editors' Choice for filling in Web forms, the Internet Explorer toolbar doesn't offer one-click access to sites for which login data is stored, nor can it generate strong passwords on demand.

MSN clearly wants to be your single source for search. Their recently-released MSN Search beta indexes nearly as many pages as Google and challenges its feature set. Now the MSN Deskbar takes on Google Desktop beta, with some interesting features reminiscent of the powerful X1 Search. Not to be left out, Yahoo! has partnered directly with X1 and will shortly roll out an X1-based Yahoo! Desktop Search. While the victor remains to be seen, the battle for dominance in desktop search has been joined.