http://toolbar.msn.com/
When I first heard about the MSN search toolbar, it sounded very interesting. I’ve spent years collecting information on all kinds of subjects on my hard drives and I can hardly keep track of it all. It made a lot of sense to me to be able to search my hard drive like searching the internet.
I found it to be useful. Just yesterday, I was trying to find a document, and the Windows search function just wasn’t turning it up. I did a search from the MSN search box on my task bar for a word that I knew was in that document, and sure enough it was found. It turned out that I was searching for a .doc file, while this one had been converted to an .rtf because I was synchronizing it with my Pocket PC.
Even when I set it up, I found it to be very useful. I did a search for “Babylon”, and found a lot of interesting files that I had long since forgotten about.
Now for the drawback: the Microsoft indexing function slowed my desktop and laptop down a lot. It reduced my laptop to the point of being practically unusable. My laptop is a P-II 233 with 96 Megs of RAM. It seemed as if every time I went through a long period of non-responsiveness, a box would pop up in the lower right hand corner of my screen saying “indexing complete- click here to search”.
This morning I made the fateful decision to uninstall the MSN Search Toolbar from both computers. Wouldn’t you know it; both of them have picked up. That’s a good thing too. I’m starting at the University of Phoenix and I will need my laptop.
I still like the idea of being able to search my drives. Perhaps I’ll try the Google version.
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