Just to be clear my name is Dave {well David}, not Doug and my last name is
Wood, not Woods, and I'm not the same person as the other "Dave" also
posting on this thread. With that cleared up, I have a couple of comments,
but I don't have a perfect solution to what you are asking ...
First off, I guess I should say that I'm an engineer and I use Vista search
everyday. Okay I'm a developer at Microsoft on the Windows Search team, so I
would say that wouldn't I? But there are a number of scenarios where the
indexed Vista search has really made my life easier. Searching my Outlook
mail - I have a few thousand mails in my Inbox and a few hundred thousand
older mails in other folders. Keeping track of all my mail is hard, and
searching this stuff using the older search was unusably slow, but now takes
only a few seconds on Vista. Similarly searching all the docs, messages,
html files etc. in all my project folders in c:\users\dave and
c:\users\public works great for me.
The default search options are a complex compromise between making the
search fast, returning relevant results, being as complete as possible, and
not taking too much system resources. Microsoft aims to provide features
that work out of the box for the majority of users without customization. We
then, in principle, provide advanced options for people to customize the
search behavior if they need to. There are lots of advanced options, but
there are cases like yours where I do worry that we haven't provided enough
control - there is no "search unknown extensions as text" option, as you
say. This feedback has definitely been received by us.
One of the problems with searching ALL file types is that it assumes all
files are text-based, which an awful lot of files types are not. And even if
they are text-based the chances that they contain meaningful human-readable
data gets smaller, which tends to mean the likelihood of false matches in
search results goes up. As you say, Microsoft really doesn't know what an
..FCS file is if there's no associated app. We don't know if it is text,
binary, database, executable, office doc, excel spreadsheet, XML etc. So we
do the safest thing and don't search it. But I agree it's sometimes
frustrating not to have that option.
One thing to note is that in the Indexing Control Panel you can add any
individual unknown extension and set it to be searched. So if there's a
specific file type like .FCS you can add this and the changes get stored in
the registry and future searches {indexed or non-indexed} will search this
file as plain text.
And finally, of course I can't comment on marketing materials promoting a
product put out by another company.
Dave Wood
"Celegans" <Celegans@nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:%23$Akxce3HHA.5724@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> "Dave" <dave@beepbeep.com> wrote in message
> news:uAaHULe3HHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> You could make sure to use some of the 200 file types that WDS can
>> index...
>> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/des...earchtype.mspx
>>
>> http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/defaul...SearchIFilters
>>
>> http://www.ifilter.org/
> Dave, this is NOT a workable solution.
>
> Scientific instruments often create their own file types and sometimes
> these files need to be searched. Sometimes the files were created years
> ago. Sometimes the same file types are used by different vendors, so the
> file type alone doesn't say what's in a file. Can Microsoft distinguish
> between an FCS file that is Fluorescent Correlation Spectroscopy data and
> an FCS file that has Flow Cytometry Standard data? Or FCS files that have
> very different versions by vendor of Fluorescent Correlation Spectroscopy
> data?
>
> Give us a way to search in Vista that DOES NOT require indexing. Why is
> VISTA taking a feature away that's worked since Windows 95? Searching for
> a string and file filter at the same time is so difficult?
>
> How can I get Windows Explorer for Windows 2000 working under Windows
> Vista?. Is the capability in Windows Explorer from Windows 2000 too much
> to ask for in Vista so we can search scientific data? Just copying the
> Windows Explorer from Windows 2000 to Vista doesn't work. Can the registry
> be hacked to make it work?
>
> I don't want everything on my machines indexed, but I DO want to be able
> to do a guided search from a specified directory. Microsoft's "blind
> search of everything" approach is not acceptable. Why isn't Microsoft
> willing to help scientists search files without imposing indexing by
> Microsoft?
>
> So, I'll never be able to search a Linux file system with scientific data
> until Microsoft indexes all the Linux files?
>
> I can't believe how much time I've wasted trying to get a workable search
> in Vista. I can't believe how much time it took to figure out the search
> in XP was flawed and was not looking at all files.
>
>>> Why won't Microsoft admit that search is a problem in Vista, that
>>> search in Vista is "not adequate" and do something about it, instead of
>>> frustrating scientists and engineers who are trying to search
>>> scientific/engineering data using Vista?
>
>
>