Whit Andrews

I saw this jump-and-take-notice blog entry via my colleague Jim Lundy. There’s a bug in Google Apps Synch that causes problems for Microsoft’s desktop search client. Desktop search from Microsoft has been OK in early generations, and in my experience with clients it’s frequently selected as a corporate standard when companies want desktop search but want to pay little or nothing for it and want it managed (and both conditions occur much of the time).

It reminded me of when Enfish had a problem that knocked down my .ost file for an afternoon while I was at a client. I fixed it by resynchronizing — I was new to using a corporate-supported server for email, after years of an ISP that’s long ago been sucked into the vast vortex of telcom 1x revs acquisitions, so that was a new concept to me — and all was well. I told Enfish, and they blamed Microsoft.Maybe they were right — too much time has passed one possibly to know. But i remember that horrible lurch when I though for an instant that my .ost was dead.

People frequently say to me that I have an impressive memory, which is how you can tell they don’t know me all that well. My memory’s a train wreck – it’s my software that’s good. I remember emotional moments, but few of those are related to my .ost’s or .pst’s.

So I can imagine the shrieking intensity that happens when people fear their email is lost or damaged. Imagine doing a search and discovering what you know should be right there hasn’t been indexed. Whew. Scary. My sympathy to the folks facing this bug, and my best wishes for a swift and effective resolution.