I don't like Windows

[da]

I'm going to rant about Windows just a bit.

Why it is that the Windows (XP) search facility is so awful? Did their UI testers hate them? Did they ultimately not care, because they were behind schedule?

I want all files on the disk that match the name "calendar". So I chose "Search" from the explorer toolbar.

So it says:

What do you want to search for?

Pictures, music or video
Documents (word processing, spreadsheet, etc)
All files and folders
Computers or people
[...and so on with other choices.]

To start with, a cheap shot: the grammar is wrong, and I don't even care about ending the sentence with a preposition. Given these choices, it should be "What do you want to search". If I search for all files, there will be 50,000 matches and I'll never find what I want. But I'm OK with that really.

I choose Documents, because I know I'm looking for .pdfs, probably even in "My Documents." It asks: "Last time it was modified:" with the choices of "in the last week" through "1 year ago" or "Don't Remember." You must choose. It must be within a year or "Don't Remember".

Sigh. I know what they meant, and I guess I'm OK with that, too. I pick "Don't remember" even though I do, and search, and... it can't find anything.

It gives me a long string of options for refining the search, quitting and making future searches faster, or not making future searches faster... which I ignore and hit the "Search" again from the explorer toolbar.

Which turns out to be a toggle, and it shows me "Other Places" instead which is apparently a code for "we don't know where you were when you started searching." No, please, take me to other places... (How about... Tahiti?)

But there's still text in the right-hand part of the window that says "To start your search, follow the instructions in the left pane". Which is totally inaccurate since the search is gone.

So I click the search toggle again and this time I choose "search all files", and it finds 12 filenames, in relatively short order, that is to say 20 seconds. And what do you know, they're in "Daniel\My Documents\".

So, what was wrong with the previous search? PDFs aren't documents? I have a corrupt database of filenames? I don't know.

Give me linux's command-line "locate calendar" (1 second) or mac's Spotlight (4 seconds, but it also searches file contents and helpfully prioritizes for most likely matches, which is usually accurate).

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I was curious how long it would take XP to search file contents as well. 12 minutes. Then, I asked it to do the same thing again, to see if it cached it. "Unexpected error. Action could not be completed."

And it seems to not cache the results, unless you explicitly turn on search caching. Oooookay.

Rant: over. I feel better now. :)

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's channeling Truman Capote (Other Voices, Other Rooms).

I wonder where the nearest Tahiti is? New Jersey is pretty far.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

"I wonder where the nearest Tahiti is? New Jersey is pretty far."

Maybe we're going about this wrong, and everywhere is Tahiti if you just click your heels two coconut halves together three times?

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I don't have ruby coconuts, unfortunately.

[If I did, we could probably afford to live in Tahiti.]

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

I've been using Google Desktop in my Windows machines for years. It searches faster, and more accurately.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've heard good things about google desktop.

I should've said that I was turning on this computer for the first time in about nine months, and otherwise don't do anything on Windows, pretty much at all. To explain why I'm just now coping with this.

On the other hand, XP is tons better than WinXP or Win98, which I have far too much exposure to. :)

[bats22.livejournal.com]

Yeah, second the suggestion for Google Desktop. I've been running it for a while, and am pretty happy. There are some files, now, that I don't bother going through my folder heirarchy to find; I just start typing the name into the Google search box. These are files that I use relatively often, and know the exact text of the name string.

It does search text inside PDFs, which is quite elegant.

Google Desktop does do some annoying things. For instance, it needs time to build up its search index, so has some issues finding brand new files, it seems. Also, a lot of the search results end up being cached web pages that are no longer saved. But I'm downloading the current version now (have beta running currently), to see if it is any better.

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

Of course a PDF file isn't a document. It's not a Microsoft file format, so it couldn't possibly be. ;)

I'm curious about Google Desktop myself, but most of the times I've seen it were times I was installing something utterly unrelated and I was asked if I'd like to install Google Desktop as well; my inherent distrust of any software so provided has led me to avoid it so far.

[insaint.livejournal.com]

I always ignore the "helpful" category options and search through all files.

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

Why in God's name are you using Windows, anyway???!! Just say NO!.... *shudder*

Reportedly, Vista has a more "spotlight-ish" search functionality ("oooh! it updates the results in realtime, as you type your query!...") which is a few years too late, but, whatever.

At work, where I am stuck with Windows, I have tried to search my Outlook inbox, and all searches fail. Always. No matter what I do.

I'm curious to see the improvements Leopard has in searching. Reportedly, it has improved customizability of the queries. What I"m hoping it has is an easy means to keyword-tag (groups of) files.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Um, you're faculty now. You're not stuck with anything.

[catbear.livejournal.com]

google_desktop++

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand. I use XP, and the Search facility, when I click on "When was it modified?" it offers me "Specify Dates" with a couple of rollers to set the date range.

There are certainly better engines out there, but this particular complaint confuses me a bit. :)

Maybe it's a Pro/Home distinction? I've got the XP Pro...

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

In fact, there's also a drop-down offering "Modified date", "Created date", and "Accessed date".

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Heh. From memory (I've shut off that system, because I found the files I wanted and the machine sounded like it had a barn-fan inside it), you may be describing what I saw after I chose "search all files"? Three expandable options on the left, and so on. I suppose it could be a preference that wasn't checked on that system...

Dunno enough to explain the difference; what I described is what this system had going when I started from clicking "search".

'Course I'm sure I could make preferences on linux or mac be at least as confusing. If I wanted to. :)

[ckd]

I use find, because with its Swiss Army Command Line I can get it to do just about anything I want. I haven't quite figured out how to effectively use mdfind, but that does look cool. (Command line Spotlight.)

(Incidentally, you can also use locate on a Mac, but you'd have to add the database build to crontab.)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

*hugs his mac's locatedb*

I didn't have to add anything to any crontabs, either. :)

(v10.4.7)

[ckd]

Ah, it's getting run from periodic/weekly (which is getting run by launchd, which one of these days I will take some time to grok its Awesome Power).