Microsoft releases “Windows Search 4.0” for XP, Vista, Server 03, 08 and Home Server

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 09 June 2008 16:49

Opinion and Analysis

Mid last week, Microsoft released an update to its “instant search” software for XP, Vista and other recent versions of Windows. What are the claimed benefits?

Although Microsoft has long had ‘search’ capabilities built into Windows, the versions that were built in to Windows 95 through until Windows XP would search through files on your computer in real time, not through the mechanism of building an index on your PC that could be searched much faster.

When Microsoft started talking about the successor to Windows XP, it spoke of an ‘instant search’ capability to come. Instead, Vista still took several years, while competitors such as Google, Copernic and others came out with their own local desktop search products, while Apple built Spotlight into OS X.

Eventually, Microsoft came out with its own standalone desktop search product with the, er... imaginative name of “Windows Desktop Search” for Windows XP.

Actually, for years, there was a 'Fast Find' program built into different versions of Office which did indeed build an index of Office files, but it wasn't system wide, from memory, and 'slowed' your computer down. I remember I always used to turn it off.

Anyway, when Vista was launched, a desktop search program was built-in, giving Vista relatively fast desktop search capabilities, but still slower than software such as Google Desktop Search.

Now, Microsoft has just released “Windows Search 4.0”, an upgrade for major versions of Windows from XP up, after a “preview” period that saw over 300,000 downloads.

The Windows Vista Team Blog broke the news, with Vista Team blogger Brandon LeBlanc making the announcement “on behalf of the Windows Search Team”.

According to LeBlanc, the major improvements are that Microsoft has “introduced some performance and reliability improvements. Queries are faster, as is indexing - how much faster depends on your machine and your data. Improved reliability means that system failures won't get in the way of the indexer and all of your data will be scanned and available for searches.”

Futher, LeBlanc notes that: “We've also extended remote index discovery, also known as PC-to-PC searches, which allows data to be searched quickly and efficiently across machines running Windows Search 4.0. This means that Windows Vista-to-Windows XP or Windows Vista-to-Windows Server 2008 queries are now possible.”

I’ve just downloaded and installed it, something that requires you to reboot your computer. As it is shutting down, you’ll notice Vista applying the update. Once the computer has restarted, your existing index is gone and will start rebuilding right away.

The index speed is "reduced" when you are actively using the computer, so it could take a "while" before your index is completely rebuilt once more.

What this means is that you won’t get any search results immediately after installing the software, but all will be back to normal soon enough, and if you leave your computer on without using it for a while the index rebuilding will happen much faster.

As for Microsoft’s promises of a faster search experience – I don’t know about that yet, it’s too soon, but hopefully it lives up to the promise of a faster experience.

Please read on to page 2 to find out where to download it!