Amazing as it may sound to sane people being driven to the edge by spam, viruses and worms, Microsoft Corp. now says it won’t be able to replace the bewitched, battered and beleaguered Windows XP until 2006.
And even then the new operating system, known as Longhorn, will not contain WinFS, the not-so-secret ingredient that was supposed to usher Windows computing beyond the doddering Windows XP.
Meanwhile, Windows users will be pretty much force-fed a software patch called Service Pack 2 to hopefully plug the worst of the infamous security holes while waiting for badly needed improvements.
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In just the few short years since Windows XP arrived in October 2001, just about everybody’s computing needs have grown exponentially.
This is because Windows XP brilliantly opened the way to the Internet for customers who have used the Web and other breakthroughs to acquire massive stores of past and present e-mails, huge collections of digital photographs, bursting folders filled with downloaded Web sites, movies, music and other forms of data.
The desperately needed way to search our Gordian knots of data is beyond Windows XP
But WinFS will not be ready even in 2006 when Longhorn is scheduled to ship, the company announced recently. Customers must wait until 2007 to get Microsoft’s help for the bookkeeping nightmares raging beneath those shiny platters of polished metal that are our hard drives.
Which brings us to X1 (www.x1.com). It is one of two major contenders with products to index hard drive contents. The other is Enfish (www.enfish.com), geared more toward professional users.
I’ll focus on the joy of X1.
“Breaking the Found Barrier,” says the logo at the upper right of the X1 display that splits the screen into a pair of panes. The first pane fills with the names of files found by making a keyword search of your hard drive. The adjoining pane displays the file’s content.
If it’s an e-mail message, the text will appear. Word processing documents appear with formatting intact. Graphic files display as pictures, spreadsheets get shown as grids, movies play in a 4-inch square display and music files get played by the same software module.
With its ability to display just about every format that matters, the X1 interface can start becoming the way you most frequently view your PC’s content, thereby replacing the Windows desktop and Windows Explorer software. X1 makes it easy to see why Bill Gates and his battalions of software engineers so badly wanted WinFS at the heart of Longhorn.
Macintosh advocates note with some glee that Apple’s OS 10 comes with Sherlock, a really first-rate indexing and retrieval engine that can either reach out to the Internet to find a keyword or search for it on the machine’s own hard drive.
X1 doesn’t enjoy access to Microsoft’s classified code that would integrate it into the Windows operating system, so it operates like any other application. The result: The indexing the software must do to track every file can sap system resources and slow it down.
X1 lacks Sherlock’s Web search feature, but it certainly does deliver once your local index is created.
As a user types search terms into the input boxes at the top of the screen, every file meeting the input almost instantly flashes onto the screen. As you type more letters, the files on display dwindle until you’re left with a list of requested items. Boolean searches are supported.
Anybody who has frittered away precious time waiting for the “Find” tool in Outlook will be delighted to see all searches of e-mail instantly displayed.
Another huge advantage with Outlook and other e-mail programs is that you really can keep every message you ever get and store them in folders that are indexed for good. Outlook’s need to constantly archive files disappears. Also supported are Outlook Express, Netscape and Eudora.
X1 defaults to index every 10 minutes, but my experience was that the machine was noticeably faster if I set it instead to do an archive each night. An “Index now” command can be used if needed.
Also on the downside, X1 has built-in security that can track all of your searches, and it beams word to X1 that your software is licensed. The search tracking is supposed to help the company spot trends and bottlenecks, but I say shut down this feature, which the options screen allows.
With Microsoft on hold, there’s a no-cost 15-day trial period, and X1 is currently selling for $74.95 instead of about $100. It looks like this outfit is going to be grazing in the clover until Microsoft can shoehorn WinFS into Longhorn.
Meanwhile, Windows wags are calling it Shorthorn.
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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail [email protected]. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611
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