Anyone catch the IP or know the URL search phones home to? I suspect I would not be the only one who would want to pi-hole this.
Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
171–180 of 189 posts
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#172It's amusing (and infuriating) that file search - IMO, one of the most important features for a desktop O/S - has been utterly broken in Windows since Vista. On Windows 10, half the time it just hangs with "Searching files", displaying zero results. The other half, search simply says "Nothing found", even when I know there is a match. I just tested it with %USERPROFILE%/.docker - open up File Explorer and search for…
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…
Unfortunately, even that is particularly impractical on windows. I'm not sure exactly who thought up the disastrous library feature, but the net effect is that it makes it really, really hard to organize stuff into folders. The arbitrary top-level boxes MS thought of are always in the way; and they're sometimes an alias for a folder, but in other ways quite different. If truly everthing were easily mountable inside a library, then maybe it would work... but the reality is that people (shockingly) have multiple storage devices, and libraries work terribly with that. But I think worst is just the generally inconsistency; everything is "special" and nothing works quite like anything else. Add to that the fact that all kinds of programs store their "user" data in your documents, using poorly-names hardcoded folder names (including lots of microsoft apps), and pretty quickly everything just turns really messy. I don't think I know anybody - technically inclined or no - that seems to be using the library feature as it was intended; most people either just accept utter chaos, and treat the PC largely as throwaway or hope they can find something using search (oh boy); or they use a parallel structure entirely divorces from the libraries, and live with the fact that lots of the OS apps and views will then make you jump through hoops to access stuff where you actually store it, because the OS always offers stuff like libraries first.
Folders work. Tags can work. Search can work. The frankenstein folder-search monster that is windows 10 used as designed - that simply doesn't work for anybody.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Apple's spotlight has had these kind of features Features? Surely, you mean these kind of bugs? :)
It’s not bugs. The software is working as designed. It’s badly designed features.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#174Recently my respect to apple is growing more and more because of issues like this. Apple is always criticised for lack of innovations compared to its competitors but their attention to smaller details and ensuring their products just "work" proved to be more valuable to customers than dozens of broken features.
Edit: Of course there are some exceptions like apple maps
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anyone from Microsoft happens to be reading this thread, please read the above comment, then re-read it. It's a spot-on description of the problems and solutions for Windows search. Edit: and just to expand on a point the commenter made, the results would be more valuable if it prioritised in an order like this: 1) Something the user has pinned 2) Something the user has launched a bunch of times 3) The shortcut le…
5. Never anything on the web
This. Even MS salespeople never try to slip in “windows search barring” in place of “googling”.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was always very skeptical about the need for search indexing for local files - how often do you search for stuff to need indexing in the first place? I have a ton of files, certainly more than the average Windows user and i do search for things often enough (at least once a day). To search i use Total Commander (allows for both wildcard/regex searches, archive searches, content search with a bunch of options) which…
Every time? Searching everything takes lots of time, searching through an indexed database takes less than a second. When in windows I use a locate-port[1] that I use to index any local disks as well as remote network shares of interest. It would take about an hour to search everything. But an hour wouldn't be that bad, the problem arises when you are not quite sure what you are looking for. Getting the response back…
I use Everything [0], a similar program which is designed to stay resident and essentially become part of your keyboard muscle memory. I have a couple custom shortcuts configured so I can easily open the result, open the result and hide the Everything dialog, or open the folder containing the result.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#177Does this mean that microsoft could be keeping copies of the meta data of every file on every windows computer on their servers and doing the search there?
Why not? that's how google desktop search used to work.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#178Hey does this effect LTSC? Like, I read the article and looked at the comments and Search works fine and great for me, always have
Been a macOS user since the start of my career, but I have been enjoying Windows 10 LTSC
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#179Earlier 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…
Might wanna try calibre.
Re: Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure
#180Earlier 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…
Might wanna try calibre. https://calibre-ebook.com/
My Calibre installation has 10,257 books! That's probably less than half of what's scattered on my drives outside Calibre.
Calibre has nice search by 'title:', 'author:', and 'vl:' but eventually it has still the same problem of endless categorisation.