06.20.07
X1 desktop search
Recommended by James Fallows, who (in my experience) knows what he’s talking about:
I prefer another program to keep track of email, Word files, PDFs, music files, photos, and everything else on my own computer. That is X1, free at X1.com which I’ve used for years and praised several times before in print. In my experience, it’s faster and more flexible, with (to me) a better interface, than either Microsoft’s or Google’s comparable disk-search systems. It sometimes crashes under Vista, but it starts up again with little delay and no data loss.
The free version is not evident. Here’s the deal. Download the evaluation copy, which gives you full capabilities for 30 days. After 30 days, it will no longer do network searches, but if you’re a personal user, it will do everything fine on your own computer, and (Josh in X1 sales tells me) you’re welcome to continue using it as a personal user, paying nothing. Support for such users is through an on-line forum, not phone support, which seems reasonable.
I myself am in no hurry whatsoever to move to Vista. In fact, I’m avoiding it as long as I can.
Ewan said,
21 August 2007 at 10:31 am
X1 is also offered for free (in a modestly cut down but in no way time limited version) by Yahoo at:
http://us.config.toolbar.yahoo.com/yds
In my humble opinion this is in the top 10 greatest PC programs ever written, and is the single best argument not to switch to a Mac.
[You should still switch to a Mac but X1 shows spotlight for the junk it is.]
Seriously every PC user needs this, but if you use Outlook it will change your life…