I really dig Microsoft MSN Desktop Search.  And for a lot of reasons.  Not only is the application cleaner and more accessible that the equivalent Google Desktop search (which I never did really like), but I love the integration with Outlook and my desktop.  To have the shortcut bars so available and the results not stale (which was a shortcoming of the Google product) is great.  Not to mention the full Windows Explorer integration is awesome...just right-click any result and you get true Windows context menus, not a generic menu from within a browser.

But all of this isn't to say that it isn't without its shortcomings.  For example, when establishing the folders you want indexable you can't see hidden/system folders to de/select them (they default to be indexed).  This is a pain partly because I don't really care if those directories get indexed.  Case in point:  I had (re)installed MSN Desktop Search when I reinstalled my OS a few weeks ago and I noticed that the index NEVER finished building...my hard drive would churn and churn and churn.  I decided to let the indexer run overnight to no avail.  This was a bit disturbing so I right-clicked the handy tray icon and selected 'Indexing Status'.  Lo and behold it was indexing files in my C:\RECYCLER folder.  I currently have Norton Utilities installed and it installed a 'Norton Protected Recycle Bin'.  It turns out that this little utility is constantly updating the contents of that folder so it kept putting the Desktop Search into a continual state of never being able to finish the index.

Rather that simply deselecting that directory to not be indexed (which I would prefer), I had to instruct the Desktop Search to not index files with the .000, .001, or .002 extensions that the Norton Protected Recycle Bin utilizes.  Though I doubt those extensions are in use elsewhere, I don't like making such a broad assumption, but I couldn't think of another way to limit the scope of the indexing.