7 ms·
Finally, someone else who feels this way! I've never understood why people praise the search in GMail so much.
by _pius 17y ago
Finally, someone else who feels this way! I've never understood why people praise the search in GMail so much.
- jsonscripter 17y agoGmail search is fast. On outlook, a desktop mail client, it can take up to an hour to search for a simple term, in my experience.
- shiranaihito 17y agoIt may be fast, but what you want is results.
- jsonscripter 17y agoI think some people also want timely results. I certainly do.
- endtime 17y agoIdeally, yes, but that doesn't appear to be an option. Given the choice between instant and incomplete results, and slightly slower but complete results, I'll take the latter.
- TallGuyShort 17y agoConsidering the difference in speed, it's faster for me to find what I was looking for by sifting through GMail's results, than to wait for Outlook's results to show up at all. Outlook's search essentially renders my whole machine useless until it's done searching.
- timcederman 17y agoHave you used Outlook 2007 with the built-in search indexer? Incredibly quick.
- jsonscripter 17y agoI didn't know. I'm stuck using Outlook 2003 at work :(
- TY 17y agoTry Xobni search plugin - it's fast and free for the basic version. It will certainly alleviate your search pains with Outlook 2003.
- andrewparker 17y agoIf you're stuck on Outlook 2003, Lookout is an add-on for '03 that adds blazing fast search. I find it works faster than Xobni.
- mistermann 17y ago+1 for Lookout...free and works like a charm!
- redorb 17y agoThis whole thread (outlook 2003 being slow, 07 being a lot faster) makes it seem like xobni should have sold for 20mm
- stevsonlee 17y agoMy favourite one is Lookeen! Lookout is old and cannot search for and in docx..xobni is a matter of tase, nothing for me!
- altano 17y agoSo it sounds like you're using Outlook 2003 on XP and don't have Windows Search (what powers Outlook instant search) installed. Hound your incompetent IT department and say you need to search your email and you need Windows Search 4 installed on your machine instead of blaming a 6 year old product and a 8 year old operating system.
- deleted 17y ago
- discojesus 17y agoif I may quote some scripture: "Gerald Weinberg tells the story of a programmer who was flown to Detroit to help debug a troubled program. The programmer worked with the team who had developed the program and concluded after several days that the situation was hopeless. On the flight home, he mulled over the situation and realized what the problem was. By the end of the flight, he had an outline for the new code. He tested the code for several days and was about to return to Detroit when he got a telegram saying that the project was canceled because the program was impossible to write. He headed back to Detroit anyway and convinced the executives that the project could be completed. Then he had to convince the project's original programmers. They listened to his presentation, and when he'd finished, the creator of the old system asked, "And how long does your program take?" "That varies, but about ten seconds per input." "Aha! But my program takes only one second per input." The veteran leaned back, satisfied that he'd stumped the upstart. The other programmers seemed to agree, but the new programmer wasn't intimidated." "Yes, but your program doesn't work. If mine doesn't have to work, I can make it run instantly." - _Code Complete_, pp.595-596
- gruseom 17y agoI love that story and have quoted it many times (though, Code Complete? really, just read Weinberg). But it doesn't apply here. Gmail search certainly works. It just doesn't have every feature.
- discojesus 17y agoGmail search certainly works. It just doesn't have every feature. It's not "completely broken," but no hits for a query of "zag" in an email that contains "zagg" comes uncomfortably close to "doesn't work." (FWIW, I use gmail and haven't had any huge problems with search, although I have had to do way more work to find something than I would expect given that it's from Google). Code Complete? really, just read Weinberg 'twas just a quick copy and paste from my fortune file. Although as far as I'm concerned there ain't nothing wrong with Code Complete.
- gruseom 17y ago
- rufo 17y agoAn hour, really? I don't use Outlook, so I don't know if that's right - but I suppose that's why the various Outlook search plugins are so popular. I haven't had a problem with Gmail search as described, but I would not classify it as fast. Often I'll type in a simple query and have it spend 10-20 seconds before it returns results. If I perform the same query on the same dataset in Spotlight in Mac OS X, it starts to return results instantly with the search completing within 5-10.
- mattmaroon 17y agoMy outlook box is pretty large and it never takes more than 3 or 4 seconds. It's not the greatest search either, but it does handle substrings nicely and automatically. It works most of the time (though I'd still be much happier if it worked all of the time.)
- dasil003 17y agoProbably because most other email search sucks even worse. Frankly I think a lot of peoples threshold for saying something "sucks" is too low. Come on, it could be better, but it doesn't totally suck. Reminds me of Louis C K's bit on Conan: http://videogum.com/archives/late-night/the-videogum-louis-ck-promise_025272.html http://videogum.com/archives/late-night/the-videogum-louis-c...
- mistermann 17y agoIn my estimation, not being able to do substring searches in emails, sucks.
- plusbryan 17y agoI love Gmail search because I've seen the difference - have you ever tried searching email in Mobile Me? It's like they ignore your query and search a random string.
- FooBarWidget 17y agoGmail's search works well. Except when you need substring search or fuzzy search, in which case it absolutely sucks. Most of the things in Gmail are done very well but non-exact search really needs improvement.