Filed under: Business, Windows, E-mail, Office, Productivity, Microsoft, How-Tos
Outlook 2007 Tip: Remove Windows Desktop Search prompts
by Jason Clarke Jan 23rd 2007
Outlook 2007 is a pretty great upgrade to Outlook in terms of user interface, but is not without problems. Chris Pirillo describes a few here, and personally I'm still underwhelmed with Outlook's performance on my machine. Even when I turn off all of my Outlook add-ins (and I run a few of them), my dual-core machine still hesitates noticeably when Outlook is sending or receiving messages. In fact, it hesitates to the point that the mouse will stop moving for a moment or two. Very frustrating. Unfortunately that's a problem that has been plaguing Outlook for years, and I don't yet have a fix for it. I do have a fix for another Outlook 2007 annoyance, however.
Microsoft seems to think that if you're using Outlook 2007 on Windows XP, you should also be using Windows Desktop Search to index your email and files. That's fine, but I've done some pretty extensive testing and in my opinion Windows Desktop Search is not the best desktop search option out there. In fact, I wouldn't put it in the top three. If, like me, you have a different desktop or email search preference (like Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop Search, Yahoo! Desktop, or my personal preference Nelson Email Organizer which is not desktop search, but the best email search tool I've found) you get stuck looking at a yellow bar in Outlook 2007 that sits at the top of every message window, prompting you to download Windows Desktop Search.
Luckily, the fix is easy, and just requires a quick delve into Outlook's options. On Outlook's menu simply navigate to Tools, Options, Other tab, Advanced Options under General and uncheck "Show prompts to download Windows Desktop Search". That's it!
Windows Desktop Search has unfortunately had a bit of a spotty record as of late. Those of you early adopters that have been running the Office 2007 beta have been subjected to the previous version which had the UI stripped out of it. This wasn't a problem for searching Outlook, but otherwise it was pretty neutered. Worse, the indexer ate up a ridiculous amount of resources, and performance was pretty spotty. 
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
