Brian H. Prince

I run this gadget. People always ask about it, and where they can get it. Here it is. I like it because it gives me a control surface on the indexing engine that is normally hidden from view. I can see what it is doing, and can pause it while I am trying to give a demo, or some other critical event.   So go download it.

There was a time when I had a lot more free time. I had time to go check the mail. The real mail I mean. To go get a drink. Perhaps to quickly read a blog post or two. Skim a tv show. Hug the kids. Lots of small activities I could fit into my day. Vista has ruined that. Damn you Microsoft! Now, the laptop boots quicker, hibernates/sleeps quicker (with one button or icon Mr. too many icons guy), runs quicker, loads quicker, searches quicker. I even upgraded my display driver from a standard Vista one to an ATI driver (I have a long hatred for ATI drivers, they always seemed to have problems, not like the nVidia drivers) without rebooting. What happened? It used to be : 1. download new driver 2. uninstall old diver. 3. reboot. 4. install new driver. 5. reboot. 6. waste 20 minutes reconfiguring the new driver to the settings I like. New Way: 1. Click 'update'. It was an optional update for the new ATI driver. 2. Wait a few minutes while it is download, and checkpoint created and i...

I have been running Vista for a while now. Not once have I had a real crash. A few applications have crashed here and there, and that is going to happen on any OS/platform. Applications have problems at times. It's no big deal. Each release of Vista during the RC/beta process was better and better. It was faster, and more cohesive. I really love the search in the control panel. Ever since Windows 3.1, I could never find the right icon for what I needed to do. The control panel was always the worst designed aspect of the system. Just a giant switchboard interface, with no real guidance, or rhyme or reason. It lacked any sense of Information Architecture. It was a firehose of options. Windows XP tried to fix that, with the groupings, and what not, but I always clicked it back to 'classic view' when I setup my profile because I had become comfortable with the dysfunctional menu, and didn't like the menu aimed for 'everyday' people. Vista has even more items in the ...