OK, this isn’t going to be much of a requiem, but I did want to point out that it appears that we’re at the end of an era. I used to take it for granted that over time, things would get better and better. Maybe that was only true when I was a kid, and that things have changed over time so that there is more room for things to worse over time. Or more likely, some things get better over time and some things get worse over time, and the relative mix depends on who you are and what’s important to you.

That said, one thing that got worse over time is Microsoft Search. I find it amazing that I have to say this, given the massive efforts and investments Microsoft is making in the search market. Given that it seems at an executive level search is “job #1″, why is it that KB search has gone fallow?

What am I referring to? The inability to search for KB articles based on the date of that article. Yes, this is something we could do for over a decade on the Microsoft site, and it made it easy to stay up to date on products, as you could search for the most recent week, two weeks, month or six months. A very handy feature that I used at least once a week for over a decade.

KB searches started going downhill earlier this year, when they removed the ability to set a date condition on your search. While they haven’t fixed that, I was able to fall back on the MCP search site at https://mcp.support.microsoft.com But last week that site went down and hasn’t been up since, which indicates to me that they don’t intend in providing the MCP search capability any longer (which is interesting in itself).

While a lot of good things are coming out of Microsoft these days, the horking of their search capabilities for IT Pro’s can’t be described as one of them. My Christmas wish is that they’ll “return to the future” and re-enable valuable features they once had.

Tom

Thomas W Shinder, M.D., MCSE
Sr. Consultant / Technical Writer

Prowess Consulting www.prowessconsulting.com
PROWESS CONSULTING | Microsoft Forefront Security Specialist
Email: tshinder@isaserver.org
MVP — Forefront Edge Security (ISA/TMG/IAG)