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


Recommended Posts

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • And the fact that the majority of people from Poland are white European Christians while the people you are complaining about in post after post are not is just a coincidence... Every sentence in your post I am replying to is racist nonsense. None of it is actually based on any facts whatsoever. All immigrants are seeking a better life too. It's literally the only reason they would risk everything and leave their homes, families, and homeland. They are working and contributing to the economy too, as you even admit. They get the same benefits your partner did AND that YOU are eligible for as well. That is one of the key things of the EU and a mark of a civilization. That is the definition of a society where everyone is given a chance, treated equally and fairly, and is judged by the content of their character, not their different skin color or which version of ignorant superstitious nonsense their parents lied about as children. Racists around the world said the same things about the Irish and Jews and Poles (like your partner) and...every other immigrant movement over the centuries. What's your family's heritage, by the way? Were your ancestors lied about with racist fearmongering crapola by self-entitled locals the same way as you are now? If someone like that said the same things about all people from Poland, like your partner, would they be right? Or would you want them to judge your partner based on who they actually were, not where they just happened to come from?
    • Again, this is an irrelevant attempt to attack the messenger. The truth does not require any justification.
    • Removed the blue and underline as you did not post a link. This would also  be considered spamming.
    • Why it's almost impossible to produce a smartphone in the United States by Hamid Ganji If you look at the back of some Apple products, you can see the famous phrase “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China.” This phrase appears on products from one of the largest smartphone brands in the United States. These products are designed in the U.S., but their manufacturing takes place in China, India, Vietnam, or even Brazil. But why can’t Apple, as one of the largest American tech companies, produce its iPhones on U.S. soil? The idea for this topic came to me after the Trump Foundation launched a smartphone called the T1 and claimed that it was designed and built with American values in mind. However, this claim did not last long, as it was revealed that Trump’s phone was actually a rebranded HTC U24 Pro, with only a gold case and minor internal component changes. You see? Even a phone that is supposed to represent American values is manufactured in China. With a gross domestic product (GDP) exceeding $32 trillion, the United States is currently the world’s largest economy, while China ranks second with around $20 trillion. On the other hand, the United States is by a wide margin the global leader in various technological fields, and American companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on research and development. From Apple and Google to Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and others, American tech and industrial giants lead their foreign competitors in many sectors. The United States also has no shortage of smartphone brands. Apple, Google, and Motorola are among the major brands in the smartphone market, collectively holding a significant share. However, the vast majority of their products are manufactured outside the United States. So why is it that the world’s largest economy, home to the most advanced technology companies and industrial powers, cannot produce a smartphone on its own soil? Let’s explore this question together. Even threats to impose tariffs won’t work After Trump entered the White House as the 47th President of the United States, his administration adopted strict tariff policies. One of these policies was the imposition of a 25% tariff on smartphones manufactured outside the United States. Trump said he “had a little problem” with Apple CEO Tim Cook over producing smartphones outside the U.S. So he thought that threatening a 25% tax on imported phones might force Apple to bring manufacturing back to the United States. “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Image via The White House Although Apple currently manufactures some of the iPhone’s chips in the United States with TSMC's help, it still shows no willingness to shift full iPhone production to the country. At the time, renowned Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote on X, “In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to the US.” However, manufacturing a smartphone in the United States is not as easy as it might seem, and many technical and economic barriers are involved. The lack of necessary manufacturing hubs There is a clear reason why many companies prefer to manufacture their products in China. China has established itself as the main global manufacturing hub for international companies, and over the past few decades, large contract manufacturers have emerged there, allowing companies like Apple to outsource production. One such example is Foxconn, which also manufactures some Apple products in India. Building the infrastructure required to produce smartphones in the United States would require tens of billions of dollars in new investment. Factories would need to be built, essential manufacturing equipment would have to be installed, and, most importantly, a skilled workforce capable of operating these systems would need to be recruited and trained. The United States currently lacks the core infrastructure needed to manufacture smartphones, and for this reason, many companies prefer to outsource production to Chinese contractors rather than spend tens of billions of dollars to build that infrastructure, which is significantly more economically efficient. Additionally, building such infrastructure in the United States could take up to a decade, ultimately leading to a significant increase in the product's final price for consumers. Shortage of trained labor in the U.S. compared to China Decades of serving as a global manufacturing hub have allowed China to build a massive talent pool in the production sector that is almost unmatched worldwide. Today, if a company chooses to manufacture its products in China, it can be confident that the workers involved in production have years of experience in their respective roles and are capable of producing high-quality goods with minimal errors. Even if we assume that tens of billions of dollars were invested in building smartphone manufacturing infrastructure in the United States, finding skilled workers would remain highly challenging. Apple CEO Tim Cook visiting the iPhone 6 assembly line in China in 2014. Image: Tim Cook on X In a 2015 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Tim Cook said the main reason Apple isn’t producing in the US is a lack of skills. "China put an enormous focus on manufacturing, in what you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The US over time began to stop having as many vocational kinds of skills. I mean you could take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in the room that we're currently sitting in. In China you would have to have multiple football fields,” Cook said. Also, in 2017, at the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, Cook once again emphasized the importance of highly skilled Chinese workers. “China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like. The thing that most people focus on if they’re a foreigner coming to China is the size of the market, and obviously, it’s the biggest market in the world in so many areas. But for us, the number one attraction is the quality of the people,” Apple CEO said. Higher labor costs in the United States Producing almost any product in the United States is more expensive than in many other countries, and one of the main reasons is the higher cost of labor in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings of full-time workers in the United States were $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, the average annual salary in China's private sector in 2025 was RMB 71,590 (US$9,961). In many parts of the world, the weekly wage of an American worker is equivalent to several months of income. Another important factor to consider is that in the United States, the workforce capable of working on a smartphone assembly line is highly specialized and therefore commands higher-than-average wages. According to an estimate by Bank of America, producing an iPhone in the U.S. is technically possible, but “iPhone cost can increase 25% purely on higher labor cost in the U.S.” However, this 25% increase applies only if final assembly is performed in the United States while components are still sourced from China or elsewhere. In this case, the price of a base iPhone would rise from $799 to around $1,000. But in another scenario, if Apple were to produce the required components for the iPhone within the United States, production costs could increase by more than 90%. Trump’s dream for a “Made in the USA” iPhone might never come true In a free-market capitalist economy, one of the primary responsibilities of any CEO is to maximize profit. Using Apple as an example, Tim Cook’s role is to maximize the company’s profits so that it can fund research and development for new products and invest in areas such as artificial intelligence, while also keeping shareholders satisfied. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that Apple would choose not to bring its manufacturing back to the United States and instead keep production in countries where labor is cheaper, and products can be manufactured at a lower cost, thereby maximizing its profit margins. What is your opinion about manufacturing smartphones in the United States? If you are an American citizen, would you be willing to pay hundreds of dollars more for a smartphone made domestically in the USA? Let us know in the comments.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Conversation Starter
      jessse3334 earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • Reacting Well
      JuvenileDelinquent earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • One Month Later
      Excellence2025 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Excellence2025 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      506
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      196
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      153
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      72
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      65
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!