Exselo Desktop

Working in a team requires both opinion and data sharing, features that Exselo Desktop promises to deliver. Using peer-to-peer encryption to secure all communications and shared files, this application aims to encourage collaboration and facilitate efficient team work and productivity.

An account is required to access Exselo Desktop, which is easily created at first launch. Invites are sent to friends via email and once logged in, they are displayed in the 'Users' list, alongside the predefined groups and current chat sessions.

To initiate a new conversation, you have to click on a friend's icon and select the designated option, which is not quite intuitive. The chat window displays the current conversation but don't expect to find emoticons, text styling tools or file sharing options there. It is merely a simple text chat window where you can exchange opinions with your interlocutor.

The application starts to index the files in the 'Documents' folder immediately after it is opened, without asking for the user's consent. Additional folders can be voluntary indexed from the 'Settings' area. The locally indexed and shared folders will be used as a source when remote searches are performed by friends in the contact list.

The search function finds files both in the local directories and the remote shared ones, providing various filtering criteria to refine the results. Moreover, Exselo Desktop integrates with Outlook, performing searches in the mail folders as well.

However, during our tests, the application failed to load remote results several times, or open remote and even local files. An app restart was required to fix the problems partially.

Exselo Desktop has its pluses (i.e. P2P encryption) and a lot of potential, but the search errors users might encounter might give you headaches. Starting with contact list management and ending with remote file searching, it all requires more work to be done. The chat window is quite rudimentary, only allowing text conversations.