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For the past couple of weeks, I've been using the new MSN Toolbar Suite of search tools since it was released.

I uninstalled it all today and reinstated Copernic Desktop Search.

While I don't think there's anything wrong with the MSN suite per se, even though it's still beta, there were three main things that made me decide to stop using it:

1. I don't need a search toolbar in Outlook. While I use Outlook, I have the NEO Pro add-on email management shell that I use for email, and which has an excellent search capability including for file attachments.
2. Difficult to pin down fully, but I had the feeling always that with the MSN suite running, things seemed terribly slow on my PC. No constant disk thrashing (as there was with Google Desktop when I tried that out), just slow.
3. Loads of strange 'Warning' and 'Information' entries in my Windows XP Pro Event Viewer relating to RSApp and RS Search. No idea what they are, but all those entries no longer appear now that I've uninstalled the MSN suite.

Plus, it all has just too many bells and whistles for me. That's one of the reasons why I stopped using blinkx some while ago (just too much stuff) and X1 (and you have to pay for that - it's not cheap). I posted commentary about both of these tools in November.

One thing I like about the Copernic product is that I have a little icon in my status bar plus, if I want, a toolbar in the taskbar. That's it. It doesn't stick stuff in Windows Explorer or in Outlook or anywhere else.

Is it better at searching than any of the others? I wouldn't say better, exactly. As good as, definitely. And, compared to MSN and Google, it finds more file types. The only thing I don't like is that if I search the web, Copernic defaults to using All The Web. Seems to work ok, but - perhaps paradoxically - I prefer using Google for that. There doesn't seem to be a way to change that. But this is a small niggle.

Overall, I'm happy with Copernic and can't see a reason for changing again.

By the way, Marc Orchant over at The Office Weblog is running a survey of desktop search tools. The top two when I looked just now: Copernic and X1.

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology. Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: NevilleHobson.com.