Because it has a tendency to run amok and suck up dozens of gigabytes of
disk space, that's why. (Last week it was 48GB) Maybe it's not supposed to
do that, but I'm willing to be it's just because of the amount of data
that's there to index and my stupid habit of responding in the affirmative
when Explorer suggest I index a folder that hasn't already been indexed. I
don't know what kind of user you are. I am a graphic designer of magazine
advertising and publishing, with an accumulated two terabytes of clipart,
vector graphics and photographic images, and the amazing mountain of junk
that can accumulate in such an enterprise that I've learned by hard lessons
to never delete. That's not a lot of data, really, I'm small potatoes. Being
a serious Windows hobbyist for the last decade and a half, I also have
several old backups of systems I flattened for family, friends and neighbors
that I never got around to scavenging and/or deleting, not to mention
several of my own. Just not enough hours in the day, not enough years in a
lifetime. Plus the three or five active multi-boot partitions that I
regularly play with or have ready to take over in the case of a crash, and
while those are usually hidden, I'm not very anal about these things. Add to
that the redundancies I have built in, all told my current total disk space,
not including active backup space, is something like 4 terabytes over 8
drives, with maybe 750GB free space sprinkled among the drives. Yeah, I
know, I need more and bigger drives. Actually, what I need is a freakin'
blade system!
Getting back to the question at hand, the worst part about Vista's indexing
is that it stores the massive, renegade index files on the OS partition, so
that when they run amok and eat up the 50% or more of the partition I try to
keep free, it has immediate and crippling effect. In short, the only
locations it is safe to index are ones I couldn't care less about, whereas
searches of the locations I tend to search aren't helped much by indexing. I
long ago got into good file-naming habits, and most of my stuff is too old
to have "tags". Either these files are responsible for the massive *.ci
files, or Explorer is truly running amok. Either way, it needs to be put
down and smothered. That's why that idiot-proofing bar is so important to
me. I want to forget about Indexing entirely, not be reminded about it every
time I do a search.
Any more questions? Better yet, you got any answers? 'Cause if you do, I
have a bunch more questions about the behavior of this smoking ruins of
Explorer that emerged from what has to have been the most ridiculous and
wrong-headed product development exercise in Microsoft history. If I
believed in fairy tales, I'd swear to God that the Office group was put in
charge. (Let me decipher that: "God" is the fairy tale, the Office group is,
alas, real.) No, telling me to use a different app is NOT an answer. Nor is
reverting to XP, since one major reason for finally succumbing to Vista for
a few months last year, and then again starting a few months ago this year,
is because I have to support a growing number of people who have migrated to
Vista. (It's taking them a long time due to the excellent service I have
provided in the past. The youngest machine I've retired was almost six years
old.) Besides, I told myself I have to give Vista a chance, if for no other
reason than, due to the miracles of modern medicine, I am now expected to
outlive XP's usefulness, much like I eventually, sadly, outlived my beloved
Windows 98, even though I still have one running for support purposes.
(You'll never guess in a million years how big a deal that was.) With only a
few exceptions I can't immediately name, I am not in the least bit impressed
with Vista. When I see that Windows 7 is more or less ready for prime time
(maybe in 2012), I'll see if Microsoft has come to its senses after this
Vista debacle. I'm not holding my breath, not gonna peek, either. Meanwhile,
as soon as I'm finished with spring cleaning, I'm going to build a new XP
system and snuggle right back into that warm, fuzzy, growing anachronism.
Best damned OS Microsoft has delivered to date. Even better (my tongue is
bleeding) than 98SE.
