The wait is over.

Microsoft/MSN will be releasing their new MSN Toolbar along with what is now called “Windows Desktop Search” within the next few hours.

I’ve been working with near-final bits for a little while now (as part of the Search Champs program) and I must say I’m very impressed with how they’ve listened to customer feedback and incorporated changes so very quickly.

Examples: 

-The “Prioritize Indexing“ option, so that those of us with excess computing power can have the index always instantaneously up-to-date.
-The ability to specify which Outlook folders should be indexed.
-Much better developer support and documentation (and they’ve got more of that in the works as well).
-Much cleaner UI, better performance, and countless bug fixes.
-Far more advanced options exposed in the configuration UI.

They even let you change the default web search to something other than MSN Search!  How incredibly un-monopolistic 🙂

As you might have guessed, I’ve been waiting for this release to show you more of the work I’ve been doing.

Watch http://desktop.msn.com for the release, which I’m told should be up within the next couple hours.