Yahoo Desktop Search (beta)

Yahoo Desktop Search is based on X1 Search, a speedy desktop file finder that sells for about $75 (~£42) 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 email 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.

Download (via DSL) and installation of Yahoo Desktop Search took less than two minutes in our tests. Once installed, the program immediately began indexing every file, email, and email 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 email and attachment queries.

Yahoo Desktop Search lists matches in the left pane; the right pane is a file viewer.

We have one gripe: The Yahoo viewer displays the contents of password-protected Outlook files -- a security flaw the company says it will correct in future versions.

We'd also like to see Yahoo Desktop Search's Web search better integrated within the main program. Currently, Yahoo posts Yahoo Web matches in a separate browser window and doesn't provide a viewer for Web hits. As for the frequent crashes we experienced, such is the nature of beta software. We're confident, though, that Yahoo will iron out these glitches throughout its public testing phase.

The outlook is good. Yahoo already has the gravitas of a major player within online search. By joining with X1, the company will be bringing a very good desktop search program to the table. Yahoo Desktop Search, once it's out of beta, will pose a serious threat to offerings from both Microsoft and Google.

Although it's still in public beta, we have great expectations for Yahoo Desktop Search, and we like the features we've seen so far.