Copernic, Google and Yahoo do better, adding small search forms to the Windows taskbar for quick access. MSN does best, offering a taskbar search plus a toolbar for both Internet Explorer and file-browsing windows.
That toolbar also features links to MSN services -- a sloppy form of marketing overreach.
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| | | | ___Personal Tech E-letter___ Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro answers reader e-mail and expands on themes he touches on in his weekly newspaper column. The e-mail version of this weekly feature includes links to the latest gadget and software reviews.
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Blinkx, Google and MSN search all your files, then sort them by category -- e-mail, Web pages, Word files and so on. Yahoo normally scans your e-mail first, but you can elect to search everything. Ask and Copernic will look for only one type of data at a time.
Speed and accuracy: The background software these search-helpers employ to index your machine don't all work as fast, accurately or unobtrusively. Google was the quickest and, as a result, the most accurate, routinely finding Web pages viewed only minutes before. MSN trailed behind, with the others further back.
MSN made the smallest dent on my laptop's performance, followed by Google, then Ask. I was much less happy with the memory devoured by the others, especially Yahoo's bloated blimp of a program.
How they show results: Google and MSN present their finds in your Web browser's window, allowing you to rerun your query through their Web-search engines.
Ask, Blinkx, Copernic and Yahoo use their own software. Yahoo's overgrown interface assumes you'll turn a file search into a "CSI" episode. Blinkx's how-cool-am-I looks bury menus and make it easy to miss such crafty features as "Smart Folders" that automatically group files matching search criteria.
All these programs let you preview documents, messages and other items without opening them in their original programs. You can even click a link to reply to or forward an e-mail message in your regular mail program.
Google is the best of this bunch, but it's not as easy to access as MSN and misses some important types of data, such as contacts.
All this add-on software winds up being both fascinating and frustrating. By freeing users from the need to think like accountants when filing their data, and to carry a quiver of applications to view different files, they promise to solve two of the oldest problems in personal computing.
But these programs also shouldn't exist: Their capabilities should be built into the operating system, something both Microsoft and Apple are working on. Windows users have a while to wait -- Win XP's successor, nicknamed Longhorn, won't ship before the summer of 2006 -- but Apple's Mac OS X Tiger should arrive this spring.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
