TechSpot: How Has Windows Search Improved Since Win2k? Hint: It Hasn't&

By pes2013
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pes2013

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Yes this is that horrible frontpage article that was posted. I wanted to make a thread about it to hear opinions. This is NOT my article and I do not agree with it: Without further adue, stupidity at its best:

TechSpot: How Has Windows Search Improved Since Win2k? Hint: It Hasn't!

Last weekend I was feeling a bit nostalgic and fired up Windows 2000 on my home computer. Win2k has a special place in my heart. Sadly, due to planned obsolescence it's no longer possible to use this fantastic operating system with the latest software available (without manual modifications).

During the day I work at a fairly large industrial company. We have many different systems and machines worth millions of dollars, so it goes without saying that if such machinery works and performs a good job, we don't throw it out just because it runs NT4 or Windows 2000. Indeed, some of them still do. The fleet is being continually upgraded though, and I'm glad to see the oldest NT4 systems leave us for good soon.

When it comes to the actual work I do, you could call me the company's factotum. I operate machines, make cutting programs in our variety of CAD/CAM software, and I'm the go to guy when one of the machines need a virus cleaning since the Siemens NT4 / Win2K / XP systems can't be easily updated. (Ok, so this was added for effect, they don't continually get viruses :)).

My office's workstation runs Windows 7 x64, it works great with the CAD/CAM software I use: AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and other machine-specific software like Mazak FG-CADCAM and Adige Artube.

But back to my recent adventures with Windows 2000. I wanted to bring up how responsive it is: You type in a network name, press enter, and voila, there is no delay. You're prompted for a password the instant you send your request. This is not so for later versions of Windows. It can take anywhere from a few seconds to minutes for the password prompt to appear. Perhaps my tiny home network isn't the best example, but the same behavior is seen at my company where there are hundreds of networked computers.

If I try to access the network from a Windows 2000 workstation or server it is instant. Try the same on a XP or Win7 system and you'll have to wait patiently. It is almost impossible to understand, especially when you consider that I can type www.techspot.com into my browser, get a DNS lookup and be brought to this site within less than a second. But to access a machine in our own company, which is at most 500 meters away, going through a switch or two and a gateway can take several orders of magnitude longer!

Be that as it may, what annoys me even more are the "improvements" made to Windows search through the years. The search box in Windows 2000 is very powerful, there are no cute animations and there are no exclusions. It's just no-nonsense search, as you would expect it to be.

Enter Windows XP and search has been "improved." You now need to click on several buttons to select how to search, which is slower and more cumbersome. Oh, and you get to watch a dog go "fetch." On the upside, XP's search engine resembles that of 2k's, it's just adorned the same way the OS was, blue ribbons and all.

Next up was Windows Vista, which we'll skip, lest I suffer from cardiac arrest!

Full Article: http://www.techspot....-retrogression/

Edited by John S.
full article snipped for brevity
Neowinian

Per Hansson

Posted
Posted

While I don't see the point of reposting the whole article here without the pictures which show in much better detail what I mean here follows then the comment I made towards "thenetavenger" here at Neowin

Hi, maybe I have a weak mind but I think there is no reason to call me "insanely stupid" by what I wrote in my editorial.

I am well aware how the indexing engine works in Windows NT6 (Vista) and later.

Infact if you would have read the editorial properly you would see that I am well aware what AQS means, I said this in the article:

"I'm well aware that it's possible to do advanced searches in Windows 7, so much that a link to Advanced Search Query Syntax is at the top of my bookmarks. However, that is the problem right there, how come it needs to be so cumbersome and inaccessible? Why not integrate it into the interface?"

My gripe is with the user interface, here is another quote: "Enter Windows 7 and search has yet again been "improved." Honestly, the search as you type functionality is an obvious usability enhancement, as is the lack of dogs, balloon tooltips and other such nonsense!"

Let me put it simply, look at the screenshot of the default search window in Win2K, you can search for allot of details without resorting to having look up how to search for something using AQS, which by the way I have another huge gripe with: It is OS language dependent, so if it's a US English workstation you would type "from:someone" to find a mail from someone, but "fr?n:someone" if the OS happens to be the Swedish variant, which is yet another reason I never manage to learn the AQS more complex variables.

But then again why should I need to?

It could be easily integrated into the user interface.

You seem hell bent on proving how useful the system is, I'm not arguing with you that the underlying indexing engine is great.

But what is a great engine if you put it into a crappy chassis to use a car analogy?

If the average user can't use the search platform how is it then useful?

Or do you think the 250 employees at my company all know AQS by heart?

I wrote this comment at Techspot for another user but it applies here aswell:

For example I have one file named: dogbone profile.docx

I can find it by searching for just: .docx

And I can find it by searching for: dogbone

But I can not find it by searching for just: bone

To do that I need to add the asterisk, so this works: *bone

And that is what I meant by the quote "That's not so bad you might say, but why make the change, and why isn't it consistent? Why can I find UltraVNC if I search for "Ultra" without an asterisk at the end of the string but not find it if I search for "VNC" without an asterisk at the beginning?"

I am also well aware that the indexing engine works across servers and clients, for example if you have a Win7 client and a Server 2008 machine searches performed on a mapped drive from the client will also be instant because they utilize the index of the server.

But this requires the server to do indexing properly, I work at a company with over 250 employees and saw problems with indexing on our servers years ago when I upgraded from XP to Win7 on my workstation.

I tried to help the IT dept troubleshoot this but we did not find a solution, however 5 months ago I found this link and sent it to them, nothing has been fixed yet though: http://windows.microsoft.com/e...-frequently-asked-questions

I can lead a horse to water but I can't force it to drink.

I think the issue is that some files are not owned by SYSTEM and thus can not be indexed, thus forcing me to login to a OS based on Windows NT5 (Like Win2K or XP) to perform the search, because it's AFAIK impossible to not use the index when searching a network drive where both the client and server supports indexing.

An example: http://hem.spray.se/hanzzzon/Win7Client-2008Server.png

Grand Master

zhangm Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted
So what's wrong then? Well, it doesn't work as you would expect. For example, if you have two programs installed, one called UltraVNC and the other TightVNC and you search for it on the start-menu by typing "vnc" into the search box, nothing will be found. This behavior is inconsistent with Windows XP where this search would work. What you need to do is precede the search string with an asterisk, so *vnc does the trick.

Tradeoff between comprehensiveness and specificity. It is logical to give higher preference to the first and second letters of a typed search subject, because those are privileged in memory. If you want to launch ImageJ or Photo gallery, do you also want results for every file that has "mag" or god forbid, "hot" in the name? You can imagine that the intelligence of the search engine could be enhanced if it could recognize words like VNC and prioritize items according to some abstract "meaning index", but that's going to hit your performance and time to display results, and it will _still_ confound people who are searching for more mundane but common files.

Experienced

pes2013

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Already Posted.

Was On Front Page.

I agree. W2k search is vastly superior in many aspects.

I reposted it as a thread because I just saw it as such a stupid and nonsense article.

And how in the blue hell is W2K search vastly superior?

Tradeoff between comprehensiveness and specificity. It is logical to give higher preference to the first and second letters of a typed search subject, because those are privileged in memory. If you want to launch ImageJ or Photo gallery, do you also want results for every file that has "mag" or god forbid, "hot" in the name? You can imagine that the intelligence of the search engine could be enhanced if it could recognize words like VNC and prioritize items according to some abstract "meaning index", but that's going to hit your performance and time to display results, and it will _still_ confound people who are searching for more mundane but common files.

The problem with that "claim" is that (I stated this in the comments) I installed both UltraVNC and TightVNC after reading the article. I opened my start menu I put "vnc" and BOTH showed up. So either he is spitting BS or he reconfigured incorrectly his search options.

Neowinian

SlickWilly

Posted
Posted

Operating Systems reflected the hardware at the time. So quick discovery of wanted data would show hardware performance (not software ineffencies). The reason for slow retreival was older slow hardware, if you didn't want to wait, upgrade. Programmers relied on fast tight code and softwares refected this conseritive approach. Jump to present day systems, gobs of memory, fast cpus, hardware to die for and searches that take ... time. Todays OS's are written for appliance operators and NOT for computer admin types. Doing everything takes longer than doing the basics and letting the user make some decisions. The roll of the W2K machine was that of a tool that needed training to be effecient in its excution. Win8 can't even make up its own mind as to what hardware it's running on. The users of new OSs are almost insignifant as to the proformance of the computer. In fact, the less input required by the OS, the better it works. It is best if ALL Windows 2000 machines were crushed, buried 3m deep, and an oblisk with a sign (Move along, nothing to see here) was placed on top. We need a JEDI to do his mind trick on all of us to fotget what it was really like to use a computer so we won't realize that we are being used by them now.

Neowinian

Per Hansson

Posted
Posted

I reposted it as a thread because I just saw it as such a stupid and nonsense article.

And how in the blue hell is W2K search vastly superior?

The problem with that "claim" is that (I stated this in the comments) I installed both UltraVNC and TightVNC after reading the article. I opened my start menu I put "vnc" and BOTH showed up. So either he is spitting BS or he reconfigured incorrectly his search options.

If your system finds those apps then either the latest versions changed the names to "Ultra VNC" and "Tight VNC"

Or you have made some change to how search operates on your Windows 7 or 8 machine so that it performs searches as in Win2K & XP.

My examples are from vanilla Windows 7 systems, and as I wrote above:

I wrote this comment at Techspot for another user but it applies here aswell:

For example I have one file named: dogbone profile.docx

I can find it by searching for just: .docx

And I can find it by searching for: dogbone

But I can not find it by searching for just: bone

To do that I need to add the asterisk, so this works: *bone

And that is what I meant by the quote "That's not so bad you might say, but why make the change, and why isn't it consistent? Why can I find UltraVNC if I search for "Ultra" without an asterisk at the end of the string but not find it if I search for "VNC" without an asterisk at the beginning?"

Grand Master

vcfan

Posted
Posted

complaining because windows 8 sorts your search results by category? that is actually much better than throwing everything together.

and your threads fails big time because you asked if search has improved since win2k,and you didn't even review windows 8 search except saying you don't like that it puts your searches in categories.

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