You Can Trust Our Reviews
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Buying Guide: Yahoo! Desktop Search - X1 Desktop Search 5.0
Contents
- Total Recall
- Yahoo! Desktop Search - X1 Desktop Search 5.0
- Ask Jeeves Desktop Search (Beta) 1.7.0
- blinkx 2.0
- Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 (beta)
- Filehand Search 2.1
- Google Desktop Search 1.0
- HotBot Desktop (beta)
- MSN Desktop Search (beta)
- Yahoo! Desktop Search
- Desktop Search Diary
- Searching Paper
- Why Pay?
- Performance Tests: Desktop Search
- Summary of Features: Free Desktop Search Tools
With nearly all the ingredients we could hope for in a desktop search app, Yahoo! Desktop Search is our Editors' Choice. Its clean interface, wealth of indexing options—in terms of scheduling, file types, and file locations—and competent results presentation add up to the best free desktop search we've yet encountered.
YDS's exceptional performance wasn't much of a surprise, given that it's built on PC Magazine favorite X1. The notable restrictions on the free Yahoo! Desktop Search, as opposed to the $74.95 X1 Desktop Search 5.0, are the lack of indexing ability for both network drives and PST archives for Outlook folders. Although it may seem like quite a bit to spend simply to gain these capabilities, if you need them, you'll gladly fork over the money. X1 5.0 remains our top pick among the desktop search apps that will cost you.