I was looking at Windows desktop search this morning

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

or if you want the toolbar as well

http://toolbar.msn.com/

Google have released this in the last few days

http://pack.google.com/

The pack includes (I've only looked at the things I will use day to day)

• Mozilla Firefox

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

I use this for aggregating RSS feeds via the Sage plugin.

http://sage.mozdev.org/

RSS isn't natively supported in IE6, although you may be able to use a tool such as

http://rssexplorer.planet-hood.com/

along with a news aggregator.

IE7 will have better support for RSS

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/02/446280.aspx

• AdAware SE Personal

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

I used this a while ago before AntiSpyware came out

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en

• Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition

6 month subscription - not sure how much after that. The Microsoft equivalent is still in beta

http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/scanner/wlscEula.htm?safety&/site/en-US/center/howsafe.htm

• Google desktop

This enables you to search for anything on your machine (emails, photos etc) from one place. The link for the MS equivalent (Windows Desktop) is above.

 

If I were Microsoft I would be getting concerned. Although there is nothing here that stands out over it's MS equivalent, the fact that you can download it as one coherent package is more than Microsoft are able to offer at the moment. If I were MS, I would be pushing "Windows Live" more, and placing all these offering under the "Live" banner.

http://www.live.com/

I will be downloading Windows desktop search this evening to discover how efficient it is.