February 10, 2005

Yahoo Desktop with X1

Almost a year ago I raved in this space about a desktop search product called X1 that I had found to be a great help to me in my line of work. It was well worth the $99 price tag for me because it quickly proved that it could make me many times that amount just by keyword searching, finding and organizing email, attachments, and all kinds of files on my hard drive that I had no way of retrieving up to that point.

Since that time of course, desktop search products have come to be in wide use and are now free, led by Google Desktop, which I have used myself for a few months now on my home computer.

So I was intrigued when Yahoo recently announce that it was partnering with the X1 software people in its entry into the Desktop Search world, because I had noticed several features lacking in Google Desktop that were things I liked about X1. One important example is the ability X1 has to keyword search the full text of email attachments, something Google Desktop does not do (as far as I can tell).

To cut to the chase, Yahoo Desktop Search now is X1 software, and of course it's now free. The good news is that I'm able to have the same functionality on my home computer that I have found so helpful for the past year using X1 at work, and I don't have to spring for another $99 to get it.

Another important advantage of the Yahoo/X1 product is that it allows you to preview any file that you find in a search, (including viewing video files) from within the application, and to perform any number of operations on that file (print, move, open, go to folder, etc.) without leaving the application. It doesn't have that familiar Google search results interface to which we have all become so accustomed, but the product seems to me much more versatile and complete than the Google entry. See for yourself. There's no reason not to have both installed and available to use.

Posted by dan at February 10, 2005 3:17 PM