Celegans

Dave Wood:

I work with thousands and thousands of scientific files -- from Windows,
Linux and sometimes Macs. Many Linux folks don't bother with file
extensions and don't "honor" Microsoft's rules. So I can't search Linux
files now in Vista? I don't work with Macs much, but a few years ago I
wrote a program to add Windows file extensions to many Mac files when they
were imported to Windows. If Microsoft doesn't "bless" a file, it cannot be
searched now in Vista? Don't you understand how myopic your current design
is? This isn't Google searching the universe. I want to search MY PC and
Windows Vista will not search all MY files on MY PC without indexing.

Perhaps it's good that you made your life simpler with the search that
Microsoft implemented, but perhaps Microsoft should worry more about
customers with search problems. I could agree that indexing mail may be a
good idea, but I don't agree that indexing all file systems everywhere is
needed before a file search can be done by Vista.

Microsoft needs to make decisions that work for the majority, but what about
minority rights here? You decide that now I cannot solve certain problems
that could be solved using Windows for over a decade! How myopic was that
decision? Microsoft made search fast, but it gives the wrong (i.e.,
incomplete) answers sometimes? This isn't Google where finding anything of
interest is better than nothing. I want to search a very specific machine
(often MY machine) for very specific files (usually MY FILES), sometimes for
very specific string(s), and Microsoft has made that task impossible with
Windows Vista? Isn't it a bit arrogant of Microsoft to take away tools that
have worked since Windows 95 and make all search decisions for customers? I
paid more for "Ultimate" Vista, why can you at least let "Ultimate" Vista
users search all their files?

I don't want FORCED INDEXING OF ALL FILES -- the Index Control Panel is a
BAD IDEA. Give me Windows 2000 Windows Explorer and let me decide how files
will be searched -- let me use the Vista search index for a "quick and
dirty" search, or let me use "brute force" in an exhaustive search of all
files. Why can't we be given that option? I may want to occasionally
search binary files for strings, but I never want to index what may be in
those binary files.

I have spent years (decades) organizing files. I have personal files that
go back to 1980 -- yes files that existed before PCs did. I usually don't
need the "blind search" that Microsoft is pushing. You guys want to index
only certain files (you'll never get the list right) and then you can only
find things in the index. I want (I NEED) a guided search. I can get
close. I usually know what directories likely contain the files of interest.
Sometimes the files are mostly binary, but I may be looking for a particular
string. Sometimes I'm only searching by file names. Sometimes I want a
combination of filename(s) and particular string(s). Why should Microsoft
care if I'm trying to search binary files containing scientific data that
sometimes have strings of interest?

I will advise against us buying Windows Vista until Microsoft fixes the
Vista search problem (but Microsoft probably doesn't care about a few
hundred licenses). Our IT people already refuse to even look at Vista for
other reasons -- I'm a maverick for looking at it now..

Is a 3rd party search tool my only real option since Microsoft will never
admit how bad the current design is? Ultimately, will Microsoft "fix" the
"problem" by a combination of marketing hype and ignoring it? I need a
solution, but Microsoft is not helping.

Repeating this question which would be a "good enough" solution:
How can I get Windows Explorer from Windows 2000 working in Windows Vista?
(without using a VMware virtual machine)

"Dave Wood [MS]" <davewood@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uk0ua7f3HHA.2752@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> 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