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Microsoft updates Bing Desktop app: Oh yeah, Windows XP

The latest version works with XP and lets you choose your background photo from a wider array of images.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET

Windows XP users can now take advantage of Microsoft's Bing Desktop app to run searches without leaving their desktop.

Released yesterday, Bing Desktop version 1.1 supports all versions of Windows starting with XP. The latest flavor also lets you set your desktop wallpaper to match the image displayed by the Bing home page. You can cycle through the past nine days worth of images, according to Microsoft. And as the Bing home page image changes each day, so will your desktop wallpaper.

The Bing Desktop sports a search bar at the top so that you can enter a query directly. In response, your default browser then opens with the search results. The search bar also offers a Top Contents icon that you can click on to view the latest news, videos, images, and most popular topics.

You can move the search bar anywhere on the screen and minimize it to the taskbar when you don't need it. You can also dock it to the top of the desktop so that it's out of view with just a faint edge displayed. Clicking on the edge then brings the search bar back into full view.

The Bing Desktop app works in Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, as well as Windows Server 2008 and 2012, and is available in English, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese.