Saturday, January 20, 2007

Random Rant

Searching

Why did the Windows XP search tool have to be so much worse than the Windows 98 one? Why do there seem to be so few decent search tools for the PC? And why does one of the few decent ones - Google Desktop not index OpenOffice files? And don't try telling me about the plugin by some sleazy-sounding American that allegedly enables it to search those files; it doesn't work.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time to go Linux?

John said...

Realistically, no.

I value the ability to play DVDs (and games on occasion), use pendrives easily and have a moderately integrated infrastructure too much. And I can't be bothered making it dual boot.

Anonymous said...

Bah.

Getting Linux to work is half the fun.



I use XP myself.

AD

Anonymous said...

Openoffice user, lamenter of the cruddy seach function, too lazy to use Linux?

You sound like my sort of computer user!

Anonymous said...

Why not try Windows Desktop Search (the official one from Microsoft)

Gives you vista-esque searching on XP. I'm sure you can find an Open Office plug-in

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/downloads/default.mspx

Iain said...

Have you tried Agent Ransack? It's pretty good (though not as quick as Google desktop search, but I think it searches ALL files).

You can google it pretty easily and it's free.

John said...

I've now installed the Windows Desktop Search (as linked to below). It does actually search OpenOffice files, which is good so thank you very much.
On the downside, it doesn't give the context anywhere near as well as Google.