In Windows 7, do you use Libraries?

In Windows 7, do you use Libraries?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 94 55.0%

  • No.

    Votes: 58 33.9%

  • I plan to.

    Votes: 15 8.8%

  • I don't use Windows 7.

    Votes: 4 2.3%
  • Total voters
    171
D

Dario D.

Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2004
Messages
582
Just wondering if people are liking/using Libraries yet...

A more informative thread thread would be, "Windows 7 Libraries poll", but I didn't want to call it that, because it would attract more people who actually use Libraries. (or just really hate it)
 
I learned how to do it recently so was using them but haven't set up any on my latest build yet but will because they are a handy feature. Libraries allows me to store docs etc. where I want and away from the OS partition and yet still access them quickly from the MyDocuments folder in the start menu.
 
Yes--they mean all my videos can be "browsed" in one folder even though they're splashed across 3 hard drives.
 
Sovereign said:
Yes--they mean all my videos can be "browsed" in one folder even though they're splashed across 3 hard drives.
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Same here, it's great for that! Also allows me to view my local videos and videos stored on whs in one view.
 
drdeutsch said:
Libraries are awesome.
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The only bad thing about libraries is that they are only for Windows 7, but all of my personal machines are on 7 so its not a problem for me. But when you combine libraries with HomeGroups file acess across all your machines becomes quick and painless. I think it's a very innovative and well done feature.
 
I have been waiting for libraries forever. It was supposed to be called Virtual Folders in Vista, but never appeared, iirc.
 
I've downloaded a few files, I've saved a few documents, I've saved a few pictures.....they've gone in the default folders within the libraries..so "Yes" technically I have used the libraries.
 
Zepher said:
I have been waiting for libraries forever. It was supposed to be called Virtual Folders in Vista, but never appeared, iirc.
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On Vista you could just create shortcuts to folders on other drivers/partitons in your MyDocuments folder and have similar functionality. I just tested it with my download folder on F: and made a shortcut to it in MyDocuments and it works pretty good.
 
It's a little different, because in a Library, you see the contents of ALL folders at once (it's basically just a cluster-folder, as opposed to what you're saying: a folder with shortcuts to other folders in it).
 
On Vista you could just create shortcuts to folders on other drivers/partitons in your MyDocuments folder and have similar functionality. I just tested it with my download folder on F: and made a shortcut to it in MyDocuments and it works pretty good.
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Except that those other locations weren't indexed by default.
 
I don't use them because most of my stuff is sorted quite well in folders on one of my hard driver's partition. I suppose I may use them in the future if need be, but for now I am just too organized to actually get any functionality out of them.
 
LooneR said:
I don't use them because most of my stuff is sorted quite well in folders on one of my hard driver's partition. I suppose I may use them in the future if need be, but for now I am just too organized to actually get any functionality out of them.
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Ditto. It's a little annoying you can't just turn them off and map the Documents etc. folders to a single folder. Really not a big deal though once you disable the indexing (or maybe just the warnings, can't remember which is necessary). The extra UI wastes a bit of space, but meh, I don't use Explorer for browsing much anyway.
 
Dario D. said:
Just wondering if people are liking/using Libraries yet...

A more informative thread thread would be, "Windows 7 Libraries poll", but I didn't want to call it that, because it would attract more people who actually use Libraries. (or just really hate it)
Click to expand...

I will use them when I get to Windows 7.
 
old dogz..new tricks... cheesy poofs. Still directory focused..as others..but Im open to learning
 
how do you set the libraries up?
is it automatically supposed to find all videos if you go to the "videos" library?
I have a couple mkv's and avi's in a folder on my desktop(about all of the videos on this new computer) and they don't show up in there. As well as a few attached externals with tons of videos and nothing shows up, just the sample video.
 
I'd use libraries, except MPC-HC can't open the \libraries\Video directory directly, only the sub-folders? I'm about to run out of room on my 2TB drive, and would like to use libraries with mpc-hc but seems I can't. (to solve the problem I wrote a powershell script that populates the mpc-hc playlist with files from multiple drives...)
 
darkhorse said:
how do you set the libraries up?
is it automatically supposed to find all videos if you go to the "videos" library?
I have a couple mkv's and avi's in a folder on my desktop(about all of the videos on this new computer) and they don't show up in there. As well as a few attached externals with tons of videos and nothing shows up, just the sample video.
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Go to libraries\video and where it says "includes X locations" where X is a number, click on that and add/remove directories.
 
I prefer OS X's Smart Folders, but libraries are nearly as useful.
 
phide said:
I prefer OS X's Smart Folders, but libraries are nearly as useful.
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OS X Smart Folders really don't compare to Windows 7 Libraries, they are far more analogous to Windows Saved Searches and are almost the same thing. I don't think that there is a true analog to Libraries in OS X natively.
 
I would like to use them but all of my stuff is on network drives, and since you can't index network drives you cant add network locations to libraries, so yeah.
 
Arainach said:
You can, the Indexing service just has to be running on the machine providing the share.
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Still, a little mind boggling that Microsoft couldn't have included a fallback to either do on-the-fly search or to index network shares. Anyone using a non-Windows box or appliance for their storage is SOL, as are those who would prefer to not use indexing. It hardly seems a required feature for the basic union of directories functionality that libraries provide.

This makes it useless to me.
 
darkhorse said:
how do you set the libraries up?
is it automatically supposed to find all videos if you go to the "videos" library?
I have a couple mkv's and avi's in a folder on my desktop(about all of the videos on this new computer) and they don't show up in there. As well as a few attached externals with tons of videos and nothing shows up, just the sample video.
Click to expand...
There's nothing really to set up. Your "Documents" library includes your "My Documents" folder, your "Music" library includes your My Music folder. etc. You can add extra folders though, so on another drive or in another folder. You can then adjust the Library setting to show you the folders within the library or to just show the documents that are in the folders in the library. I don't like the later feature because you can't tell where the item is from, so I leave it on the default view.

Libraries basically just bring folders scattered around your HDD into one space.
 
keenan said:
Still, a little mind boggling that Microsoft couldn't have included a fallback to either do on-the-fly search or to index network shares. Anyone using a non-Windows box or appliance for their storage is SOL, as are those who would prefer to not use indexing. It hardly seems a required feature for the basic union of directories functionality that libraries provide.

This makes it useless to me.
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You can index network folders: http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windows/desktopsearch/search/options.mspx
 
Still, a little mind boggling that Microsoft couldn't have included a fallback to either do on-the-fly search or to index network shares. Anyone using a non-Windows box or appliance for their storage is SOL, as are those who would prefer to not use indexing. It hardly seems a required feature for the basic union of directories functionality that libraries provide.

This makes it useless to me.
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This may work on your little home network, but on anything of medium or large size, the network would die from the congestion of dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of machines trying to read and index every single file on every single share.
 
heatlesssun said:
Seems like Smart Folders and Saved Searches are more of the same thing than Smart Folders and Libraries.
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Are Saved Searches treated as virtual folders or just as shortcuts to search results?

EDIT: It seems they are. Why is it that I never hear about these features? Goodbye Libraries, hello Saved Searches!
 
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Arainach said:
This may work on your little home network, but on anything of medium or large size, the network would die from the congestion of dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of machines trying to read and index every single file on every single share.
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Well yeah, but that should be the administrator's choice as to how it should be dealt with. Providing a graceful fallback for home users would seem to be an obvious, easy, and desirable option to include. I very rarely use search, but I'd like the equivalent of 'My Documents' to work; working the way it used to would be fine.
 
I still don't understand enough about them to utilize them. Some demonstrations posted in this thread kind of cleared a little of that up though.
 
Jon55 said:
I still don't understand enough about them to utilize them. Some demonstrations posted in this thread kind of cleared a little of that up though.
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What don't you understand? You add folders to the 'library', and all the files in those directories show up in the 'library', which you now use instead of the original directories, and you can set the default 'save to' directory. Pretty easy to understand.
 
Yup. Makes it easy to keep track of the two media directories I have that reside on different physical drives.
 
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