Desktop Search Roundup

Paul Boutin has written a roundup of the various desktop seach options. Personally I've tried the Google and Microsoft (MSN) Desktop Search applications. I only lasted about a week with Google Desktop Search because it 1) doesn't index file formats like PDF, 2) uses a browser based UI (like the web search) that isn't that usable for desktop results (where you typically do care about all of the results) and 3) keeps a bazillion cached text copies of files that change frequently. So far I am reasonably happy with MSN Desktop search - it seems to be better out of the gate since Microsoft reused the infrastructure for writing indexing plugins (iFilter) and there were existing ones available (for example, PDF, amongst others). I'll probably try the Yahoo! desktop search when it comes out. It seems like the desktop search market will be stickier than online search due to the effort/cost associated with switching - I often use different search engines but I expect I will stick with only one desktop search client.