OT: vista cool feature!

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did GCC Consulting say:
> 
> I've been readin one of the books on Vista.  Apparently vista has a very
> much improved search function.  It can search text and/or metadata
> infromation to help find files.  

It was supposed to be better than it was but they scaled it back for
performance vs time constraints issues.

> To use the metadata functionality one will have to take the extra step in
> actually filling in this information.  This function has been available in
> MS Office for some time but has been defaulted to OFF.  Apparently the hid
> the option to turn on this function quite well.  

I enter metadata in mp3's and video clips I create.  That's it.

> It has been suggested that when one turns on the indexing function for the
> first time, do it at night when you or at some time when you don't plan to
> use your computer for a very long time. 

I use Win2K Pro and I turn -off- indexing on all NTFS filesystems.  This
results in a 20-50% speed increase depending what you're doing.  That's the
first thing to go on any system that has NTFS partitions.  It was the
second thing I did to my laptop when I got it, right after updating it with
the latest patches.

> If this function actually works, one could search processing tables save in
> ASCII format for a given function or variable.  That would be interesting.
> Say a search on DECLARE foobar.

You know, if there's a market for it, I'd rather write a GUI search engine
for fP processing tables than use MS's search.  You have no idea how much
the features that support it slow the system until you try to game with it.
Office types won't notice it.  Performance users will.

> The downside of this is that it could search indices or the keys for
> matching data.  I hope there is some way to restrict the file name or type
> from being indexed.  Need to do a bit more reading.

Have I mentioned that I think search is overrated?  :)  The whole field
seems to be becoming Googlecentric, for lack of a better term so I'll make
that up.  Seriously...if I need something, Find Files has always worked
just fine for me for years.  On *nix, I'll use find, xargs, and egrep.  If
I just need a file location and know a partial name, I'll use slocate.  I
don't need any more than that.  I have a really -crappy- memory since the
sleep apnea altered it several years back, and even I know where I keep
which data.  I think I do a search for a file like once every three months
or so.  It's certainly not a selling point for me.

mark->
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