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Cut & Paste for when you really need to reorganize? But usually it would probably be enough to just list the most recent files somewhere and provide full text s

Cut & Paste for when you really need to reorganize? But usually it would probably be enough to just list the most recent files somewhere and provide full text search for everything else.

xab9 9y ago
Seeing how my elderly parents use the computer: you don't manage files. At all. Right click is evil, keyboard shortcuts are evil, drag and drop never occurs to them. Mom usually just reads her emails (and attachements open in the browser nowdays), so it's not a problem, but father saves files. If he finds something important then he saves it multiple times, so in the file list view there will be multiple similar items, that's how he knows it's important (visually it's very distinctive). When he has to copy a file somewhere else he usually fires up his CAD software, opens the file and then saves it elsewhere. I just gave up "educating" them (after countless attempts). It's pointless. I remove file duplicates half a year, copy stuff to an usb key when he asks me (I visit them once a month) and avoid the machines like the plague, unless they explicitly ask me to do something (I installed ubuntu for mom, which works wonderfully for her, one less problem to worry about).
chrisper 9y ago
Cut & Paste is (was?) dangerous btw. Windows could lose your files: 1. Cut a file. 2. Paste it somewhere. 3. Hit control Z. 4. Cry because your file is gone. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-update/how-to-recover-files-lost-by-ctrlz/74e7e588-e27d-4e04-8eda-5876ced6adaf https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1... But it seems I cannot reproduce that in the current build of Windows anymore. So I think they finally fixed it.
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  Yup, I ran into this issue enough as a kid that I stopped using cut/paste/undo in explorer. If I needed to copy or move files around, I’d use the command line—which also had the effect of making files copy much faster (seconds instead of minutes) for some reason.
DougWebb 9y ago
There's something different about cut & paste vs drag & drop, though it won't impact most people. If you're using RDP and copying files from the host computer to the remote computer, it's natural to cut/copy the file on the host and paste it on the remote. Drag/Drop isn't as natural because you have to mess around with the RDP window size and scroll position to be able to see Explorer on both machines. The file copy occurs very slowly, and requires a lot of memory. Copy/Paste uses the clipboard, so the entire file gets read into memory before it can be written to the remote filesystem. It goes slowly because there is apparently an un-optimized loop copying bytes. Instead, on the remote system you should open two Explorer windows, one for the destination and one for your local filesystem, which RDP adds for you. Then you can drag & drop the file you want to copy. This skips the clipboard and also seems to use a much better optimized byte-copying loop. The speed difference is very noticeable. Pro-tip: if you're copying lots of files, zip them first and copy the zipped file. That can reduce a multi-hour copy operation into a couple of minutes, even if the compression ratio is awful. Windows is really, really bad at multi-file copy operations.

Cut & Paste for when you really need to reorganize? But usually it would probably be enough to just list the most recent files somewhere and provide full text search for everything else.

xab9 9y ago

Seeing how my elderly parents use the computer: you don't manage files. At all. Right click is evil, keyboard shortcuts are evil, drag and drop never occurs to them. Mom usually just reads her emails (and attachements open in the browser nowdays), so it's not a problem, but father saves files. If he finds something important then he saves it multiple times, so in the file list view there will be multiple similar items, that's how he knows it's important (visually it's very distinctive). When he has to copy a file somewhere else he usually fires up his CAD software, opens the file and then saves it elsewhere. I just gave up "educating" them (after countless attempts). It's pointless. I remove file duplicates half a year, copy stuff to an usb key when he asks me (I visit them once a month) and avoid the machines like the plague, unless they explicitly ask me to do something (I installed ubuntu for mom, which works wonderfully for her, one less problem to worry about).

chrisper 9y ago

Cut & Paste is (was?) dangerous btw. Windows could lose your files: 1. Cut a file. 2. Paste it somewhere. 3. Hit control Z. 4. Cry because your file is gone. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-update/how-to-recover-files-lost-by-ctrlz/74e7e588-e27d-4e04-8eda-5876ced6adaf https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1... But it seems I cannot reproduce that in the current build of Windows anymore. So I think they finally fixed it.

evincarofautumn 9y ago
Yup, I ran into this issue enough as a kid that I stopped using cut/paste/undo in explorer. If I needed to copy or move files around, I’d use the command line—which also had the effect of making files copy much faster (seconds instead of minutes) for some reason.

DougWebb 9y ago

There's something different about cut & paste vs drag & drop, though it won't impact most people. If you're using RDP and copying files from the host computer to the remote computer, it's natural to cut/copy the file on the host and paste it on the remote. Drag/Drop isn't as natural because you have to mess around with the RDP window size and scroll position to be able to see Explorer on both machines. The file copy occurs very slowly, and requires a lot of memory. Copy/Paste uses the clipboard, so the entire file gets read into memory before it can be written to the remote filesystem. It goes slowly because there is apparently an un-optimized loop copying bytes. Instead, on the remote system you should open two Explorer windows, one for the destination and one for your local filesystem, which RDP adds for you. Then you can drag & drop the file you want to copy. This skips the clipboard and also seems to use a much better optimized byte-copying loop. The speed difference is very noticeable. Pro-tip: if you're copying lots of files, zip them first and copy the zipped file. That can reduce a multi-hour copy operation into a couple of minutes, even if the compression ratio is awful. Windows is really, really bad at multi-file copy operations.