APP SHOT
WANDA SLOAN
You know how you go to Google and enter a search and almost instantly get results?
"Results 1 - 20 of about 280,000,000 for thailand in (0.14 seconds)"?
And you click on a link and it leaps into your browser window?
Well, it is a pretty helpful way to compute. And now Microsoft has released a brand new search module for Windows XP that does none of the above.
It may seem rather pointless to review a rather uninteresting, even irritating program, but this is Microsoft, and this is what you get when you want to find something on your Windows XP computer.
Years in the making, finally released at the beginning of June, the new Windows Search 4.0 is available as a download direct from Microsoft to all, even those whose XP comes from Pantip Plaza. There would have been more justice if Windows came from Microsoft and the new search program came from Pantip.
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| The new Microsoft search engine is enhanced in many ways, including showing previews of what it finds for you. |
The new version totally replaces the old search engine, and of course that is no loss. After you download and install the 5.3MB component, it will want to index your hard drives, meaning, lamely, the folders Microsoft calls "My Documents". Hunt around and you can make it search other folders as well. The index speed is painful; I finally walked out for a smoke, and there was enough time for a packet.
You expect after all that indexing the program will find your files quickly, and you'd be half right - it will find your indexed files, but not one thing more.
The biggest improvements are that the search will show a preview of some of the files it finds, and images are reasonably quickly thumbnailed, but it seems to take about 20 seconds to display a simple Microsoft Word document.
I have put Windows Search 4.0 on my XP computers, but only because it's pretty well built into the operating system. If you need a speedy, simple, helpful hard disk search program, this isn't it.
Download it if you want from tinyurl.com/22h8jf.
Email: wandasloan@gmail.com.
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