This afternoon we made a follow-up post addressing some of the suggestions, comments, and concerns that showed up in the comments to the original entry.

If you have more feedback, please keep it coming.  I and others will try to respond in the comments over there, or in future follow-ups.

Also, if you like the gadget, please go to the Gadget Gallery page and give it a good rating

Download Indexer Status Gadget on Live Gallery

Windam – I wonder why this would be released for Vista since search is already a well integrated feature to begin with.
Is it just because(optional)?

Maudit - Pardon my ignorance, but what the difference between Windows Search 4.0 and the one in Vista ultimate sp1, does it streamline into windows ?

A similar question was asked on Channel 9.

The answer is quite simple:

• Windows Vista includes “Windows Search 3.0″
• Windows Search 4 is an upgraded version of the indexer built-in to Vista.
• This release does not change the User Interface, it looks exactly the same.  The improvements are around responsiveness, resource usage, reliability, API support, etc.

A good analogy here might be DirectX.  Windows XP shipped with DirectX 8.1.  When DirectX 9 was released for XP, it didn’t change the way anything looked or behaved, but it made your system better.  You may apply a similar understanding to WS4.

• Faster queries, often several times faster
• Faster indexing / reduced resource usage
• Support for EFS (encrypted folders)
• Support for indexing delegate mailboxes
• Fixes for all the top reported Watson crashes / errors
• New group policy options

This release also adds the following Vista / Server 2008 features to Windows XP / Server 2003 systems:

• Remote query support (using the server’s indexed when querying a network share)
• Support for Vista-style preview handlers (Office 2007 documents, etc)

Read the KB article here for more details and complete feature list.

Download Links

Vista / 2008                    32-bit    |    64-bit

XP                                   32-bit    |    64-bit

2003 / WHS                    32-bit    |    64-bit

Vista users – don’t forget to grab the indexer status gadget!

Click here for details.

Note that the screenshot depicts the gadget running on WS4.  The "index now" button is not available on versions prior to Windows Search 4.

This features isn’t entirely new.  Windows Vista shipped nearly a year and a half ago with the ability to query the index of another Vista machine when searching file shares.  The same capability extends to and from Windows Server 2008.

Windows Search 4.0 brings this capability to Windows XP machines, as well as Server 2003 – and perhaps more importantly, Windows Home Server.

So how does it work?  First let’s take a look at how the user sees it.  Let’s say I have a folder on Machine A called “Cool Stuff” that I want to share out.  One simple way to do that is to browse to the folder in Explorer, select it, and click “Share.”

You’ll then get a friendly dialog that asks you who you’d like to share with.

“Everyone” is a simple answer for information you want to be accessible to everyone.  Select it from the drop-down and click “Add” to add Everyone to the list of people the folder is shared with.

What else do I have to do on Machine A?  Nothing!  Windows Search 4.0 will automatically index any folders you share out, on both XP and Vista.

On Machine B, you simply navigate to the share as you normally would.  That could mean typing a UNC like \\MachineA\Cool Stuff\ or it could mean using a mapped drive, redirected User folders, the Network browser, etc.  Once there, just type a query in the Search box (or on XP, click the “Search” button to bring up the Search Pane) and you’re off!

Unfortunately I don’t have any XP machines to get a screenshot from, but I’ll try to add one soon.