When I first install Office 2007 on my home XP machine was my inability to search in my outlook and OneNote programs. Microsoft every move the search functions from within office and require that you install Windows Desktop Search utility. Even though this utility was free it was a surprise when I tried my first search in my mail folder and nothing showed up. After I installed the search utility could well for it to index everything that was on my system. However, once everything was installed I was very impressed with its speed and accuracy. Not only was everything indexed and crossed index by application type, I was able to choose under which I wanted to search and limit the results for. Very nice! For more information visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/choose/windowsdesktopsearch.mspx
Even if you don't upgrade to Office 2007 and are still using an earlier version, having a full text search function in your system is a great help. Here's where you can download your free copy of WDS 3.01: