Microsoft Is Testing File Recommendations In Explorer - Slashdot

Posted by BeauHD

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  In our company, we work on what Microsoft recommends we do or should look into.

  If you need more guidance on your work today, GPTManager will answer all your questions.

  • The problem with all those recommendations is that you will be diverted from what your main task for the moment should be.
    Don't flood people with distractions. That's what the UI shall do, and that's why I'm missing the simplicity of the Win2k desktop that was very distinct. Not an ineffective artistic experiment that Win10 is.

    • Re:

      "simplicity of the Win2k desktop"

      When the Windows 95 shell became available for NT, I thought it was a great upgrade, and indeed, after Windows 2000 it only became steadily worse. The Classic UI tool was something I installed on everything since Windows 7, and luckily I barely had to deal with Windows 10 before I quit IT.

      At home, I've been using fluxbox for ages with a custom theme and nothing but a text clock in the corner for a distraction free, blank desktop. I shudder when I see a Windows desktop now.

• How many times has search in File Explorer not found a file you know is present? How many times has it found a file that doesn't contain any of the search terms? How many times has it searched for hours? Microsoft has never managed to get search to work. For God's sake - f-in Mac OS Finder is able to reliably search and is fast.Command line find with grep is faster on Linux and Mac than anything in Windows except maybe find and grep in GitBash.

  • 2 hidden comments

  • • Re:

      What makes you think MS is indexing your files for you? It's just so they can search what they want, when they want.

  • Re:

    Wait File Explorer has a search?

• For a useful computing assistant you need something that knows what files are associated with what people, activities, times, and so forth. Creepy as hell? Yup. But it's that, Clippy, or nothing.

  • Re: It's the next step.

    I'd take 'nothing'.

    Best search tools are the *nix 'find' and 'grep'.

• Of what files are stored on Windows PCs, in order to do useful work with a straight face.

  I'm laughing at the idea of that Chat AI being the voice to Explorer as it suggests video files to view next.

• This is just going to learn to point to porn files. Every. Time.

  • Re:

    Microsoft is late to this party: Cloud storage spends weeks reminding you what you viewed/saved last month. Look at porn and it's in the 'Recent' banner for the rest of the month/week.

• I'm using Windows 11 now, and when I open the File Explorer it shows me a list of recent files and folders. What's the difference?

  • Re:

    This new version might not list your porn?

  • Re:

    I don't know, but it seems like the MRU (Most Recently Used) registry key is something that I remember clearing out back in the late 90s, and I'd be surprised if it didn't go back to Win95, and also surprised if Win 3.x programs didn't implement such a feature via.INI files.

    It'd be funny (but par for the course) if this "new" feature was no more sophisticated than MRU, but I expect it to at least add *something*, like, oh... now your MRU files are reported back to MS via the ubiquitous telemetry.

  • Re:

    Recent and future recommendations are not the same.
    You recently viewed "Spicy Thai Cucumber Salad-BBC Good Food.pdf"
    Based on your recent files we recommend you open "Two hot girls use cucumber.mp4"

• Everything moves into cloud. So should your file browser. In another way making it cloudy and confusing where you are, what you have.

• The start menu / app launcher in Windows 11 is crap for a number of reasons.

  But the most aggravating is there is NO WAY to turn off app recommendations. Click the icon and up pops up recommends apps above the ones you pinned. There is a setting to control if you want more recommendations or less, but not an option for NONE. So that thing is constantly on, wasting space and cluttering up the UI.

  I could see file explorer turning out the same way. I don't want recommendations. I program software so that's just going to be filled with random shit at any given moment. Let me turn it off.

  • Re:

    Then how are they going to sell that space to advertisers - down the line?