Designing a product with the “user experience” in mind is a very important (and often overlooked) aspect of any successful software product. The MSN toolbar is no different, and at least from a UI perspective, excels in this area, at least when compared to the current Google suite of add-in's. I would say the experience is even more significant when you consider that the whole of Microsoft's latest offerings are greater than the sum of Google's, at least for now. Let there be no doubt friends, the race is now on between Google and Microsoft in this area!
User Experience
You could also compare the MSN Toolbar presentation to the slickness of the XP “luna“ interface. The Google add-in's are simple, functional, and yet more austere and functional like the popular KDE interface for Linux. Both are functional, one arguably more so than the other, but each seems targeted to different audiences. If you like Windows XP's warm and fuzzys, bright icons, liberal use of color, and all that associated goodness, then you might find yourself liking the MSN Toolbar. If you're a hardcore Google user and know how harness the power of their advanced search queries, then you'll feel right at home with Google on the desktop.
That said, the MSN toolbar is still a bit rough around the edges. For instance, when browsing web sites, the toolbar will helpfully alert you to web pages that have forms that the toolbar can assist with filling out.
Search Results
So far Google is returning the most accurate search results from my computer and the MSN suite is the most unforgiving when it comes to having the smarts to find similar results to what I am searching for. For example, I can never remember the password to my blog here. And I can never seem to remember how to spell Donny's name so I can find the email where I had him configure my password for me. If I search on “Donnie Mack” the MSN Toolbar plugin for Outlook returns zero results, whereas the Google Desktop Search will find it immediately (does Google ever return a bad search result?).
Overall Impressions
The MSN Toolbar suite is off to a great start. Surprisingly, Microsoft has responded to the Google desktop challenge with a worth competitor that leverages the inherent mastery of the Win32 api's and indexing services. I'm not ready to give up on Google's suite by any means at this point, but I'm sure that the competition between the two will only bring greater products to the masses!
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