Microsoft reinvents its own wheel

WITH A NERVOUS eye on Google, Microsoft has released a beta version of its 'new' desktop search product. Part of the MSN Toolbar Suite, Desktop Search lets you search by keyword to find documents on your PC in a few seconds - just as Google's Desktop Search does. The beast of Redmond clearly moves in mysterious ways, because Windows has actually included a lighting-fast desktop search feature for several years now. Microsoft just didn't tell anyone how to use it.

It's called Windows Indexing Service, and it's a standard feature of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. In fact you can start using it right now if you want.

Now, you may be laughing at me here, because you've already tried the Indexing Service. It's easy to find: the standard Windows search includes an option to enable it. And if you've tried that, eagerly anticipating what Microsoft would probably call 'a greatly enhanced searching experience', you will have reached the conclusion that the Indexing Service doesn't work.

With Indexing Service turned off, searching for a file on a windows PC is glacially slow. And, with Indexing Service turned on, searching for a file is still glacially slow. Searching is slow because Windows is examining every single file. And, while you're searching, your PC will be slow too, because of all the disk access.

Why? In a smack-your-forehead-and-say-'Doh!' piece of software design, the standard Windows search feature doesn't automatically send your search terms to the indexing service, it just carries on searching in the same old way, by examining every single file on the disk. And woe betide WinXP users if it stumbles across a compressed ZIP file while searching, because your PC will grind to a halt while it decompresses the file to peek inside.

To actually use Indexing Services as it was originally intended, you need to utter a few magic words, which Microsoft has chosen to keep secret from the common user.

First, turn on Indexing Service, and leave it alone for a few hours so it can index all your drives. Then open the Windows file search box as you would normally.- for example, by choosing it on the Start menu.

Here's where the magic starts. First of all, type only in the space labelled 'A word or phrase in the file' (or in Windows 2000, 'Containing Text').

Now, to find a word inside a file, simply preface it with '!'. And, to find a filename, preface it with '@filename'.

So typing '!vacation' and hitting 'enter' will instantly find files containing the word 'vacation'. And '@filename vacation' will instantly display all filenames containing the complete word vacation. You can add a '*' to the end to find other words like 'vacationing'.

These simple techniques are enough for most everyday searches, though there are more powerful functions hidden in the query language.

It appears that the new MSN search simply provides a more user friendly front end to this existing service, and makes a few more file types searchable.

Why did Microsoft choose not to promote this extremely useful feature to ordinary users? Perceived lack of demand, corporate infighting, incompetence... your guess is as good as mine. But you can be sure of one thing: if Google hadn't come along to give Microsoft a good kick up the BIOS, Windows' secret desktop search function would have remained in obscurity for many years to come. µ

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