Use these tips to find the information you need faster, regardless of its location.
Get Killer Desktop Search
Because of a partnership with Yahoo, you can get X1’s fast, powerful search function on any Windows XP or 2000 Machine by downloading and installing the free Yahoo Desktop Search (desktop.yahoo.com). This tool lets you easily find everything from documents and pictures to contacts and e-mail messages. We love the preview pane, which supports 270 file types, and that you can forward items via e-mail right from within the X1 interface.
Ask Away
The dark horse in the search-engine race, Ask.com (www.ask.com) is maintaning about a four percent market share, putting it not only far behind third-place MSN (at eight percent). Ask.com’s natural language parsing is a different, and sometimes more useful, approach compared with the usual keyword search. Ask.com also breaks down common uses on the left-handed side of the screen for additional, more targeted queries.
Use Every Engine
Dogpile makes searching multiple engines a snap by fetching answers from Ask.com, Google, LookSmart, MSN Search and Yahoo Search. After running a search, check the IntelliFind results at the top of the page for deeper information, such as online videos or stats about a related movie when searching for a specific actor. Pull up Recent Searches from the bottom-right side of the screen for an instant query history.
Try Mr. Spock
Google is great for general searches, but Spock (www.spock.com) is highly optimized for finding people. Type in a person’s name or some other keywords such as “Swiss Professional Tennis Player” or the university they attended. You’ll get back a list of not just the people you searched for, or the people who are associated with the particular tags you typed in, but complete profiles.
Don’t Forget Vista
This OS has built-in desktop search that’s about 500 percent better than XP’s crippled indexing. Vista’s Instant Search lets you find files, e-mail, photos, and programs just by typing the first couple of letters in the Start Search box (located at the bottom-left hand corner of the new, improved Start menu). As you type, Instant Search’s look-ahead function will deliver results immediately, organized by asset type.