Editorial: Has Windows Search Got Any Better Over The Years? Hint: It Hasn't

Finding things 10x faster is one thing. The problem is the index can skip things and not display the results you are after. To me that is unacceptable and the reason I don't bother with indexed search.

Also configuration of the content indexing... there is no automated smarts for this. It is manual config to set it one way or another and have you looked at the list of extensions windows has registered?? Who wants to spend hours or even days configuring the settings or validating the existing ones from some seemingly endless list??

Seems to be a nice article, but I won't bother reading it...
Windows search has been amazingly improved, ever since windows Vista, then W7 and now it even works better, if you know what you are looking for...

3 out of 4 times I want to search something in a Windows machine, I type the search, I wait 5 seconds, I get bored and I try to find the file while waiting for the "search" to "find" files. As it turns out I tend to put files where I will most probably find them if I search for them (I know me quite well and I always find the damned file after some careful browsing in my directories. Then I return to the "search results" which almost never have any non ridiculous findings and close the search so that the hard drives stop crunching.

Locate32 is awesome. Thank god there is that solution for Windows too. Shame to MS for not doing it right after so many years.

while my search for check operates as if I entered *check*.*
and I do find checklist.doc, user_checks.xls, etc . . .

Wow! First time I see an image of Apple's search mechanism... It's so simple and all I could dream of... Why, oh, why are we in the dark for so many years? Damn gaming... Especially on Metro, couldn't they make it behave a little smarter? Why must I click on each category?

They changed it where quoted terms have the same effect. Hope that helps.

As I mentioned, I am talking about searching of network shares. They are not indexed.

I never ever use Windows search. If you have Total Commander, why would one? It is not only Windows' search which is terrible, it's file manager or explorer cannot even be compared to the old DOS Norton Commander. If you have TC your file system becomes liberated. The same goes for Android with TC (use Beta 2.0).

Why MS cannot learn from others in this area after so many years and billions of Dollars research, blows my mind.

You're right. I guess I skimmed the article too much.

I also miss Windows 2000. Remember you can always configure XP's "dog search" to look like the Windows 2K search box too, without any third-party tools.

SearchMyFiles is another alternative search program to try (free).

Actually, NO :sigh:
I did use the Advanced Options to select the directories to be search, eg a few \root-dirs, the \users and to not look at AppData.

I was hoping that there was a [x] search file contents I could negate, but that's not there (in Win\7 at least).

I also took the time to REBUILD after making these changes to prune uninteresting contents.

ps: personally, I wish it were more literal in the requests, eg doc <> doc* <> *doc* <> *doc*.*

Per file type??? OUCH

UPDATE: Just verified your suggestion. a) it is global and not per file type and (get this) b) is already set.

That makes Win/7 search really bizarre ; it ignores the option and indexes content anyway -- oops, I forgot, this is Windows.

I might be a bit old school when it comes to searching. But whenever the windows search doesnt give me the results im expecting I go back to the good old cmd.exe.

Doing a "dir file.txt /s" takes about 10 seconds on my ssd system drive (from the root of the drive). And best of all is it supports wildcards and is all built in

But that's not windows - - - that's DOS and Windows does everything better [just kidding, actually quite brilliant buddy!]

Started using Fedora 17 x64. Don't have enough money to afford a x64 bit Windows OS. Fedora is free and works very well! Getting x64 bit is essential for being more productive.

For basic searching I have found Win 7 search to be good however it does have it's quirks. I have had times where I search for file.doc and in Start it shows up but not in Explorer, even though I can see file.doc in the current folder. I've had some users that have to reindex fairly frequently to get accurate results. I do like the network integration with 2008 R2, that has come in handy. As for Windows 8 search, I don't like the fact that I have to start the search and then click on a Category such as Settings to find what I'm looking for, just display everything.