For me it's mostly about the search index. I can treat my local data store
like any indexed database - as a black box against which I can throw queries
that return immediate results. Just like we throw queries at Google and its
index returns virtually instant results. If Google worked the way most of us
work with our file systems today, slogging through 8+ billion Web pages
trying to find whatever you're looking for, you'd be waiting months for your
search results.



This is a huge improvement over the way we've been doing things since the
days of DOS (and earlier) and floppies. And much more realistic given the
speed, capacity, and low price of today's hard drives. It just does away
with all this nonsense about "where" something it, what "type" of thing it
is, what its filename name is. These things are secondary and unimportant.
Just like they're secondary and unimportant when you do a Google search, or
any database search for that matter.

I doesn't matter if the thing I'm looking for is an e-mail message,
newsgroup post, Web page in favorites or history, picture, movie, song, text
document, source code, or whatever. That's irrelevant. I don't have to care
what it is, where it is, or what program I use to access/create it. I just
need to know it's in my local data store. From there I tap the Windows key
type a word or two and click its name on the Start menu.

And that's just one tiny example. It's way bigger and more important than
that. And will only get better with time. Vista is just the first step in
that big turning point on how we treat out personal data stores. It's not
for everyone of course. Different people use their computers in different
ways. But that's a biggie for me because I just have too much stuff in my
local data store to keep doing things with navigation, Search Rover,
wildcards, and shortcuts.

"Ray" <black_bart100@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:910B5A05-F1F6-4FE1-A0A1-BF9BBC58B4C6@microsoft.com...
> Nobody wanted to touch my earlier post about backing up folders so I'll
> say this.
>
> I don't like it. <stamps foot>
>
> I want to keep all my genealogy files in one place, located in my user
> folder. A folder called "Genealogy" with sub folders "Files", "Images",
> "Documents" etc. I can't do this because MS has locked folder "Ray" into
> showing 11 folders of their choosing when accessed from the desktop. I can
> make umpteen folders within "Ray", but just MS11 show.
> I wish this arrangement because then I know where all my files are, under
> one roof. If I want to copy them to another drive, folder, back them up
> etc. it makes it so much easier.
>
> What to do?
> I can place my folder within one of the 11, but my files consist of all
> sorts of types, not very consistent with good naming practices.
> Create a folder on the desktop, this would work and it would get backed up
> when I backup "Ray", (I must say here that I backup to .zip files) but on
> the desktop gets messy. I look upon the user folder as akin to a filing
> cabinet where I get to set the filing system.
> That's why I liked XP, almost everything I wanted went into there, I was
> glad to see that Vista put "Contacts" in there as default.
>
> This has been a bit of a rant, but also I'm hoping that someone can advise
> if there is a better way. Vista is being touted as a new way of doing
> things, so maybe there's something I'm missing because I don't see this
> new way yet.
> The impression I got when starting on this "Vistavoyage" was, I could put
> files, lets say images, anywhere on the drive, have them tagged as
> belonging to my genealogy project, and when I needed them the system would
> pull them ALL into a virtual folder of some sort for my use.
>
> And that's that
>
> Ray
>