Today we released the final version of Windows Search 4.0 to Microsoft Download Center. Windows Search 4.0 updates search in Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. This release comes after a public Windows Search 4.0 Preview, which was a success thanks to great community participation – with around 300,000 downloads. Since the Preview was released, a number of quality improvements have been made to the product based on feedback provided by the community.
- Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x86)
- Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x64)
More download packages are available on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157 as well as more information about the changes made.
Changes:
- Performance & Reliability – Everything’s faster and the indexing engine will continue on it’s merry way even through system failures, without starting from scratch
- Peer-to-peer searches – Data can be searched for across other machines using Windows Search 4.0
- Management through Group Policy – This is dramatically more detailed than before providing controls over what gets searched, and what kind of network utilization is a machine has.
- Exchange Online Indexing – Index your mailbox when online, even if you don’t run in cached mode. This has minimal impact on the Exchange Server.
- EFS Encrypted File Indexing – This will search through encrypted contents even if encrypted however only people that have access to the content will see results based on the search.
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 