Microsoft has announced an update to the mouthful "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search 2007" -- which is now called "Search Server 2008", but is still the somewhat stripped-down version of the full search engine included in MOSS 2007. In addition to those two versions, however, Redmond now also offers Search Server 2008 Express -- a download available for free.

So what's the catch? The "Express" version is fully featured, and has no document limit or any of the other usual crippling limitations. Of course, there is a such a thing as a free lunch: you'll have to buy a drink to go with it. In this case, if you want to use more than just one server for your search engine -- and high volume usage might quite quickly warrant scaling your infrastructure -- you'll have to shell out the money for the full version. By that time, you're probably already relying on your search engine and will have no alternative than to pay up. And maybe you'll upgrade to MOSS while you're at it -- or so Microsoft hopes.

So as a trial version, Search Server 2008 Express will be great to get your feet wet -- just don't start getting too cozy with it if you're not planning a budget for when you'll hit the one-server limitation.

So is there anything else in the 2008 versions that warrants the updated yearly version number? Well, I'll let you know after the 220Mb download finishes; in the mean time, I'll go buy myself a drink, without the free lunch.