So here’s a little more info on Windows Search 4.0 for those of you wanting to give it a closer look. First, you can get it here: www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/default.mspx. It’s available for Vista SP1 and XP SP2+ as well as Server 2003 and Server 2008, and remember that its claim to fame is that it adds “federated searching” (leveraging a remote PC’s index) and searching of encrypted files to the feature set of the Longhorn search engine, formerly “Windows Desktop Search.”
Most of us need the ability to search our e-mails from time to time, and Windows Search 4.0 does offer the feature of searching Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook XP, and Exchange mailboxes. It offers document preview of Office documents as long as you’re using Office XP or newer. The product also works with 64-bit versions of Windows. Incidentally, it’s a system service rather than a user service.
Microsoft has built in some security to the service, also. If a given indexed file is marked “Read-Deny” for Valerie Smith, and Valerie performs a search that turns up that file, she won’t be able to read it via Windows Search. In fact, the search engine won’t even show her the document if she has no permissions to open the document. (Now, if Valerie had the ability to read but not modify the file, Windows Search would present the file to her in a search.)
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