Those who don't have a tidy mind are always complaining about the antiquated search function in Windows (see screen 6). Unless it has indexed all the files on your PC, the animated puppy (if you haven't already buried him) in Windows XP trawls through every file and folder each time a search is requested, This can be time-consuming, especially if you have only a vague idea of the right search term to use. Windows does have an indexing feature, but it is turned off by default. Even when it's on it never seems to help much.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Copernic offer practical desktop search engines. Our favourite was Yahoo Xl because it used the least amount of resources during indexing and had the best search performance.

Name: Ineffective search.jpg Views: 42 Size: 17.4 KB

Google and Microsoft's alternatives either use too much power during cataloguing or take too long to display the results. If you don't want to install a search tool on your PC, you can send XP's animated sniffer dog back to its basket: switch to Classic search mode by clicking on Hkey _ Current_ U ser\Software \Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ CabinetState in the Registry, and then adding a new String Value using the context menu. Name it Use Search Asst (with spaces). Allocate the new entry a value of 'no'.