A lot has been happening in the world of desktop search since last we
released a version of X1 Desktop Search. The battle has been joined by
some very big and very savvy companies - and we managed to partner with one
of them (the best one, of course), thus bringing our innovative solution to
millions of people - some of whom may help introduce us to others in their
organizations, furthering our aim of selling software to enterprises of all
kinds. We also received a “Best of 2004″ award from PC Magazine and also
their prestigious award of Technical Excellence, in addition to numerous
kudos from journalists and pundits of all stripes. Needless to say (but I
will), it was quite a year for us.

But that’s not the point of this mail. After a long beta period, we’ve just
released v5 of X1 Desktop Search, with extraordinary improvements - and it’s
free to all X1 users. It now sports a new, more standard, interface; an
integrated index, allowing a single search across all of your data; huge
performance improvements, which means you’ll notice it less when you’re not
using it, while getting your results faster when you do use it; no limits on
the amount of data that can be indexed (there used to be a 4GB limit to the
size of our index files… no longer); tighter integration with Outlook;
support for Thunderbird (and coming support for Lotus Notes); and many more
things. There’s an exhaustive list of improvements and bug fixes at the end
of this mail.

All of this work is our way of saying thank you for using X1. We’re in this
to make a profitable company, of course, but we’re also driven by the desire
to change the way we all work; to make us all more productive. Going
further, for those of you who work in a business or organization that has
central computer support and administration, would you please check out our
forthcoming Workgroup/Enterprise versions of X1 Desktop Search? These
offerings incorporate deployment and administration tools, permissions and
authorizations support, and a centralized server-based index that can also
be accessed by a browser. We obviously feel that every company needs one to
help its employees do their best work possible! You can get the low down at
our web site.

Here’s the link to download the latest release.
You will need to re-index, from scratch,
so don’t upgrade unless you don’t need to search for a little while. Also,
you cannot have Yahoo!’s product and ours installed simultaneously. You can
also (always) go to our forums to get it, see what
people are saying about it, and read the complete release notes. It’s a
pretty active forum - and an integrated part of our world-famous customer
support.

Again, thank you very much for using X1.

Mark Goodstein
Formerly chief cook and bottle washer, now Founder and EVP, Business Development