Mike

In comparison to WDS, Lookeen indexes much faster (a 100.000 item .pst file needed about 1,5 hours). And if you do a search, the results are displayed under 1 second!!
Another big advantage is, that Lookeen even searchs within attachments (or documents). I was so amazed when I used that feature the first time!!

I somebody is interested in Lookeen, you can load a 14-Day-Trial Version of it under http://www.lookeen.net

First we were annoyed by an oh so pleasant animated character. Yes, Microsoft, we corporate users like cartoons. Then Windows Search came along. You stupid user, you wanna search? Build a f*n index first!!! Stupid user!!! Microsoft issued Windows Search that fast that the consistency of the looks of Explorer is broken, as long as you do not have an XP with Mickey Mouse Theme. MS loves cartoons and jokes.

Search in Vista: do not even try it. It was way too easy to click with the right mouse button and selecting search to get a search box where -sigh- you had to include hidden/protected/system files. MS thinks the ordinary user does nothing else than browse to the Windows folder, delete everything he doesn’t recognize and then start ranting against MS about how bad Windows is. That’s why files and extensions are multi-hidden by default. And that’s why an evil user without any knowledge whatsoever can cripple his machine in no time. Yes, Windows Search 4.0 (???) had to be released since Google released Google Desktop. A search engine that runs excellent, but is not that handy searching in particular folder.

What kind of people are in charge at MS? Some old school friends of Bill Gates who don’t know about computers? Here is another fine example. Lately IE8 was released as an important update. Nice. Yet another click-click-click-agree?-yes?-certain?-click-click-click eternal runonce ruining productivity and settings, throwing around tab pages for the thousandth time, making end users call support desks because they encounter a lot of text instead of the familiar web page. Great, MS, we love to clickclickclickclickclick on every computer we encounter, due to some ‘important’ releases! More! We love to click and agree with endless texts, we love to change our search engine, we love it, we were waiting for it! Over and over. The best shot MS performed in my opinion is to make IE8 to adapt secure server settings. This gives amazing results. Especially on a terminal server in a 24/7 corporation where users need to visit websites and enter stuff in web applications. The internet is Blocked with a B and there is no way in MS Hell to turn it off. Nothing. The brave souls at MS suggest reinstalling the server from scratch, without enhanced security. Something end customers just love, another expensive ICT project lasting for days while users cannot access web applications! What on earth, Microsoft?!! PS, you forgot to mention that installing Firefox does the trick too. However, MS should issue this advisory: Do not install IE8 on a terminal server. Ever.

MS needs to reconsider some people higher up on the payrolls. MS makes some fine products, but the typical MS attitude regarding updating is unacceptable. As an ICT professional with about two decades of experience I dare to say that the majority of money spent on ICT is spent on cleaning up MS Mess. Making things work again as they did and should. This is apart from the figures invoked by improductivity because of MS Cleverness.

Most problems I have with writing the controls are related to COM and not to the fact that the controls use the Unicode charset instead of ASCII. If you want to know anything, just ask me (but the forum would be a better place). I’m willing to share my knowledge, because I know how difficult it is to find out how to correctly write ActiveX controls that are a bit more complex than the ones you create in the usual tutorials.