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Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

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Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#121

Post by frabert »

kranner wrote: post #101
qalmakka wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally never use search tools; at least, not with files I've created myself. IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories and sticking to that is much more effective than dumping stuff around the filesystem and then having to rely on search in order to untangle the mess. That's why I tend to disable desktop icons; in this way I always have to force myself into opening a file manager and ac…

> IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories I have a lot of ebooks on my computer (> 10000). One problem with organising books and other PDFs is that sometimes they fall into multiple categories. (Should a new scientific article on lucid dreaming go into 'brain and cognitive science' or 'meditation' or 'hypnosis' or 'sleep' or 'self improvement'?) I could dump each new file into the directory…

You can add tags to files instead of putting them in folders, I believe

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#122

Post by Dylan16807 »

desc wrote: post #49
tanseydavid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to both of you for mentioning this. Every time I encounter this strange behavior in WIN10 -- I am so dumbstruck by it each time it still feels like it must have been a "glitch-in-the-matrix". I mean, because no one would really release software like that, would they? At least not a multi-billion software behemoth like MS? Right?

I know why this happens. It happens because someone doesn't understand that search rankings vs. queries have to have a 'smooth' solution, and thinks they can tweak a few weightings here and there to get the results they think are 'correct' for the very specific cases they have in mind, without realising that this has a knock-on effect on the entire scoring space and you get odd singularities and stuff popping up as a…

It goes far beyond weightings, things will be completely missing with no reason.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#123

Post by Gravityloss »

makecheck wrote: post #33

The search behaves “as if” it’s using randomly-ordered keys in a random source dictionary, and it’s maddening. If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result is always different: one time it acts like the app isn’t even installed, another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and m…

Apple's spotlight has had these kind of features for a long time too, though most of the time it mostly works.

It loses your input, it baits-and-switches, it opens completely irrelevant software (often uninstallers that immediately begin an uninstall process or never-used settings pages), some applications are plain missing from there and have to be accessed through the application menu always.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#125

Post by Semaphor »

makecheck wrote: post #33

The search behaves “as if” it’s using randomly-ordered keys in a random source dictionary, and it’s maddening. If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result is always different: one time it acts like the app isn’t even installed, another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and m…

It’s pretty stable for me.

I start typing "Code", by the time "Cod" is typed, I see VS Code and want to press enter, before I realize that, I get done typing the "e" and out of nowhere "code.bat" (whatever that is) appears and gets executed.

Stable at a PoS level.

Windows search is the worst part about Windows 10 for me and I have no idea how anyone ever thought it was at a better than some pre-alpha stage. All the different updates do, are make it behave in new utterly dumb ways.

Luckily Keypiranha means I rarely ever need it.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#126

Post by Semaphor »

brianpgordon wrote: post #113
thegeekpirate wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bitt" shows me zero results, but "bitto" (all the way to "bittorrent") works. It's beyond b0rked!

Same. And "torrent" returns no results at all. :/

Funny. "bitt" -> nothing. "bitto" -> works. "bitt" -> now works as well.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#127

Post by kranner »

frabert wrote: post #121
kranner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories I have a lot of ebooks on my computer (> 10000). One problem with organising books and other PDFs is that sometimes they fall into multiple categories. (Should a new scientific article on lucid dreaming go into 'brain and cognitive science' or 'meditation' or 'hypnosis' or 'sleep' or 'self improvement'?) I could dump each new file into the directory…

You can add tags to files instead of putting them in folders, I believe

Yes but conceptually it amounts to manual classification into multiple categories, which is just neverending work in my experience.

Manual classification is still useful to classify documents according to labels that are not present as strings in the books' contents though.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#128

Post by kemotep »

stinos wrote: post #88
kemotep wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely roll my eyes when people say that on Windows everything "just works". I have to fix (or just deal with the fact that I cannot do anything about it) just as many things that break or go wrong with Windows as I do with Linux. Hacking around with the registry is just that. A hack job to roughly get Windows to behave until the next update breaks it. At least on Linux you have the whole system open to you and…

But for some people it just does work. Without the need for any hacks, just some tweaking of settings. So when I see people saying they roll there eyes when they they see those claims, I say: think a bit further, consider other factors. Like, it depends on what you do with it perhaps, on the hardware?

I agree that for some people, they stick with Windows because their hardware and software does just work. Compatibility with the things you do is important.

However we are in a thread about how Windows 10 search just up an broke and whose only permanent fix is to disable part of it in the registry.

The search function barely works compared to alternatives too.

People can absolutely stick with Windows but I was referring to people who argue that they cannot try alternatives because they don't "just work" and you have use a command line and do all this configuration stuff.

I have less problems on Linux and most of them are of my own creation, trying to run software in wine or use hardware with non-free drivers.

It helps to adapt to doing things the Linux way when using Linux instead of contiuing to operate in a Windows mindset.

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#129

Post by retsibsi »

Semaphor wrote: post #125
makecheck wrote: post #33

The search behaves “as if” it’s using randomly-ordered keys in a random source dictionary, and it’s maddening. If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result is always different: one time it acts like the app isn’t even installed, another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and m…

It’s pretty stable for me. I start typing "Code", by the time "Cod" is typed, I see VS Code and want to press enter, before I realize that, I get done typing the "e" and out of nowhere "code.bat" (whatever that is) appears and gets executed. Stable at a PoS level. Windows search is the worst part about Windows 10 for me and I have no idea how anyone ever thought it was at a better than some pre-alpha stage. All the d…

On Windows 8.1, when I want to run Paint.NET I have to remember to accept the suggestion before typing the full name; it guesses correctly until I finish the .net, at which point it decides I want to open a web page.

(Honestly though I'm pretty happy with it, it's good enough that I never miss the old-fashioned Start menu like I expected to.)

Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

#130

Post by cherrera303 »

I quit using Windows search a long long time ago but I have to admit that it worked better in the WinXP days.

Currently using SwiftSearch with very fast results, as it reads directly from the NTFS MFT. No databases, no indexing, no background processes or services. There's also UltraSearch that works with the same idea but is more polished.

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