WinFS has ceased to be
Looks like Microsoft have finally admitted defeat and killed WinFS. Paint me unsurprised, I'm old enough to remember Cairo, and watched as the object file system has moved over time to be put into the Next Big Release of the operating system. In the meantime, however, things like Google Desktop and MS's own MSN Desktop Search have utterly eroded the space in which WinFS was going to reign. I'm sure that MS wanted WinFS to be much more than the current crop of desktop searches, but as far as users are concerned, desktop search is just good enough for them.
I used to use Google Desktop Search, but I found it to be annoying in enough ways to remove it, and I've not moved over to any other system to replace it. I guess I just know how to find things in other ways, the built-in XP file search is slow but effective enough for me and my email client (TheBat) has another built-in search facility that hasn't let me down yet, so I don't miss unified desktop search.
One more feature of Vista down, my experience with it so far is that it's a prettier, more annoying (UAC anyone?) version of XP that won't install on my main system. There are few compelling reasons to upgrade for me so far, since all the interesting features (WinFX for example) are being back ported to XP. I won't be queuing up to buy my copy at midnight, that's for sure.
[update: looks like WordPress had a special moment and deleted most of the text, I've added as much back as I could from memory. Note to self, back up entries]
June 25th, 2006