Lookout for Outlook

Published 5 years, 4 months ago in windows

Lookout looks really cool. It’s a plugin for Outlook that lets people search super fast on Windows machines and in Outlook files…

But I’ve got a problem with reading these comments by a Longhorn evangelist about how this product gives us a glimpes of what WinFS will bring to the Windows Operating System, not because it doesn’t sound cool, but because it’s sooo far away… When is Longhorn going to get released again?

I don’t mean to be rude or too inciting here, and I welcome the introduction of Longhorn, but doesn’t Mac OS X’s Finder already have the equivalent of WinFS, or at least ‘fast find’? I know it finds files on my computer at Googlespeed straight from the Finder. I didn’t have to fork out the cash for Outlook, and I don’t get viruses on OS X… I also have pretty damned fast finding features using Apple’s Mail (which is free) and the email client I paid for (Mailsmith) has super-fast and truly featured search options. Outlook and Windows have both always sucked at searching…

I’ll download and install Lookout tomorrow on the Dell… because I really could use a good way to search inside Outlook. Anything that makes Outlook useful (like Inbox Budddy) is good news to me.

And, yes, if I had my druthers, I’d use a Mac at work, but I don’t get to have my druthers.

(And, I spotted a reference to X1 in the comments of the post from Jeff Maurone… I just might check that out too)

8 Responses to “Lookout for Outlook”

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1 Gregg Mar 4th, 2004 at 10:33 pm

The difference, as I understand it, is that WinFS will act as a kind of data store. Your Word documents, Outlook email, all that stuff, will be kept in this store. You won’t need to worry about paths and filenames and traditional metadata; WinFS will manage all that, correlate it, sift through it. The key part of the post is where he’s talking about a kind of “outer join” through the filesystem.

At this point it really seems conceptual, since there’s the problem of no running WinFS code to see all this in action…
2 paul Mar 4th, 2004 at 10:42 pm

Call me skeptical, but I don’t think I want all my documents stored in SQLServer (essentially, that’s what it will be, from my reading). There are ways to index data with storing in a database.

If all you need is to index your email, take a look at Zoe (www.zoe.nu).

By the time Longhorn gets here, count on better options being available.
3 Ryan Walker Mar 5th, 2004 at 12:07 am

By the time Longhorn gets here, count on dentures.
4 pete Mar 5th, 2004 at 1:12 pm

I don’t know much about WinFS but from what I’ve heard it sounds similar to BeFS that the BeOS used. Any experts willing to compare the two?
5 Chris Mar 5th, 2004 at 2:03 pm

Paul: Its not really going to be storing your data in an SQL server, atleast not from the way I’ve been understanding it. You still have your NTFS sub-system, with a few improvements, which acts as your data store.

What WinFS will be is a layer above that. Its almost a semantic layer. Data will be organized into piles instead of folders, which is one thing I wasn’t really understanding. THe most simplest def. I’ve come across is that WinFS will do filesystems what ID3 tags have done for music. Makes everything completely searchable in a realistic way and makes organizing quite easier. Its supposed to put a human face on all of our data.

I could be wildly off base but thats what almost every thing I’ve read on it has said.
6 paul Mar 5th, 2004 at 2:46 pm

This might be worth reading: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html#R10

<quote>The most important feature of Longhorn is replacement of the familiar DOS/Windows filesystem with an object database (W0). You will no longer copy files to a floppy or CD-ROM or attach them to an email, because there will be no files. Database records will be copied from one database to another, probably through a .NET server. Large organizations will have their own .NET servers, but everyone else will use one of Microsoft�s, a service for which you will pay a fee. The Longhorn filesystem will be based on the technology of a re-thought and expanded SQL Server database (the project coded Yukon) (W8). Obviously, SQL Server being so tightly integrated with the filesystem (W19) will have a negative impact on publishers of other database engines for Windows. Not strange then that market leaders Oracle and IBM are heavily pushing the Linux platform and barely mention their products run on Windows any more.</quote>
7 paul Mar 5th, 2004 at 3:02 pm

On the BeFS: <quote>The BeOS had many features that endeared it to its users. One of these was its filesystem (called BFS), which was fast, supported large (64-bit offset) volumes and files, had metadata journaling for garunteed filesystem integrity and fast startup, and supported extended attributes for files and directories.</quote>

If the capabilities of BeFS were wanted, there’s a driver for it here: http://befs-driver.sourceforge.net/about.php

And the internals of it are/were documented here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558604979/102-6536692-6569702?v=glance