Take Vista SP1 and XP SP3 to a New Level with Windows Search 4.0 Preview

With Windows Vista Service Pack 1 available to the general public as of March 18, 2008, and with Windows XP SP3 having hit RC2 Refresh stage, Microsoft made available Windows Search 4.0 Preview, designed to take the search capabilities of the two platforms to the next level. The Preview build of Windows Search 4.0 is designed to integrate seamlessly with both the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista RTM and SP1, XP SP2 and SP3 and Windows Server 2003 and even Windows Home Server. Despite the fact that in terms of search capabilities Vista brings a consistent evolution to the table compared to XP, the Windows Search 4.0 Preview will enhance the default functionality of even Vista SP1.

On March 27, 2008, Microsoft delivered a "little ‘preview’ of the next step for Windows Search. The Windows Search Team is making available Windows Search 4.0 Preview – a preview of the next version of desktop search for Windows," said Nick White, Windows Vista Program Manager. According to White, the Redmond company has focused its efforts on dealing with the bugs that were reported via end user feedback. Microsoft approximated that the majority of the issues associated with Vista RTM have been fixed.

"Great improvements have been made with regards to performance. Even now as Preview, Windows Search 4.0 has query response time about 33%faster than search queries in Windows Vista RTM. The Windows Search Team has extended Remote Index Discovery for PC-to-PC search to work one very supported version of Windows. The Windows Search Team has [also] implemented Rollback Recovery where your search index will roll back to the last known good state (this is good in handling disc write errors). If an error occurs, your index isn't rebuilt from scratch; only the newly changed files are added to the index," White added.

Windows Search 4.0 Preview was connected at one time with a Microsoft research project codenamed Casino. But at the same time, version 4.0 has diverged from Casino via an emphasis on quality, increased performance and reliability rather, and in this context it is nothing more than the evolution of Windows Desktop Search 3.01. What Microsoft made specifically clear is the fact that Windows Search 4.0 Preview is designed as an update to both the Vista RTM and SP1 search files, but also to WDS 3.01 on XP and Windows Server 2003. The company has not revealed when it plans to wrap up with Windows Search 4.0 Preview.

"We have improved performance when indexing Exchange in online mode, sending fewer packets and making less RPC calls. In this process we apply significantly less load on the Exchange server too. Support for Group Policy settings is extended and improved; per-user policy is supported now. We now support EFS - Windows Search 4.0 will index encrypted files, and user can search for them in the sane UI and through the same user experience as seen with regular, unencrypted files," White said.

Windows Search 4.0 Preview can be downloaded from here.

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