Lookout replaced by "Windows Desktop Search"

Microsoft has a fine tradition of buying up good ideas.

They have grabbed several cool things in the last few years, Lookout (an outlook search indexing tool) and pstools (a toolkit for administrators) being a couple of them.

Well, Lookout is no longer available on Microsoft's site. You have to go dig up the most recent version (1.3) off of other people's archives if you want it.

All that you can get from MS right now is "Windows Desktop Search", and if my initial use of it is any indication, it is not remotely based on Lookout.

Lookout was roughly 2.5mb installed, WDS had a 5mb executable install file (I uninstalled it, so I don't know how big it was installed, but you can bet it was larger than 5mb). File size means something because SMALLER means LESS JUNK. It may also mean less options, less power, etc. But if a 10k application can do the same thing a 1000k application can, you have to ask why.

Lookout installed in about 15 seconds, and began indexing my entire mailbox when I opened Outlook. WDS fuddled around on install and seemed hung, and then added a new, gigantic toolbar 'search' section to my desktop. It finished indexing pretty quickly, and was not able to locate a single item in my inbox.

Lookout found and displayed my results very quickly. WDS never worked (out-of-the-box is how all software should work) and so it's history.

Lookout may be a one-trick pony, but it does what it does well.

WDS is yet another pile of non-functional garbage from Microsoft.

Thanks for tanking a great app, Microsoft! I already have backups of all the pstools files, so, when you go and wreck them and replace them with gigantic, slow, poorly designed crap, I'll have them to fall back on.