Microsoft was the first that came to the scene with “integrated” search. Involving a massive search index to make finding stuff a lot faster. It was touted as being a WinFS feature, and of course we all know how WinFS is these days. Soon after the announcement (a couple of years back now), Google released Google Desktop Search, and Apple did a similar thing in the next version of OS X. Suddenly, everyone was on the indexed search bandwagon.

Funny thing is, Windows XP always had search indexing, it just wasn’t very good. If you go to Start > Search, and look through the options, you’ll find the option of searching through the index. For some reason, it was terrible though and hardly worked. Microsoft tidied it up for Vista though, and put it everywhere. In fact, why have a search box on your taskbar, since it is embedded in almost every app that comes with Vista?

You’ll find a search box in the Start menu, Windows Explorer, Mail, Internet Explorer, Calendar, Windows Media Player, Photo Gallery and countless other places. But would you use it?

Well, maybe, yes. Of all the features in Vista, when I boot into XP I miss this one. And GDS and Live Desktop Search all suck. You are kind of forced into it with the Start menu, as they have modified the way the All Programs menu works - it is no longer a menu. It is a series of point and click operations, which can be tedious, that it is easier to type a couple of characters. The benefit of the Start menu search is that not only does it search the Start menu (that is its priority), but it also doubles as a command line, so you can launch anything from anywhere, including your e-mail.

Windows Explorer search is much improved too. At any time, you can start typing a few letters in the search box and it will instantly filter the file list. It even looks through program and file metadata so that if you come across a whole barrage of setup programs, typing in the program that you want will most likely yield your result.

Case in point. I use the Firefox extension Scrapbook to keep together some of the more amusing internet pages at my disposal. I even keep some important ones in there, like my timetable. One day I had to find my timetable, but I didn’t know where it was because I hadn’t installed Firefox at the time. I looked through the Scrapbook folder. Each scrap is kept in a dated folder.

In XP, it would have been a pretty daunting task to find my timetable, looking through each folder. In Vista however, a couple of key presses and I’ve narrowed my search.

They aren’t even named “timetable.”

Despite the demise of WinFS, I think Microsoft were quick in providing almost all the features that it was going to provide. As said before, it is one of those features that I miss, and it is really helpful. No more trawling through folders, spending minutes at a time looking for the program to open some conspicuous file needs.