Sherlock--Why?

[Charles Martin]

> From: Stephen Foster <foster at pop.ca.inter.net>
> The first time I tried Command-F it did what you say. Subsequent
> efforts brought up Sherlock and as I can't seem to get it to "index"
> the complete hard drive it doesn't find items I know are
> present--somewhere.

I'm not sure what the problem is there, but it sounds like you have the 
"old" Sherlock2 around and it's conflicting with the Find function of 
Jaguar.

>  I find Sherlock very frustrating and, for me,
> not very intuitive and therefore useless.

What part of Sherlock are you finding frustrating? We can't help if you 
don't tell us what's happening. I strongly suspect that you have a copy 
of Sherlock2 that is conflicting with Sherlock3 and that is what is 
causing your problems.

>  I started, and stayed with
> Macs because I didn't want to know anything about computers I just
> wanted to use them. As the os has evolved I find I, and the mac, are
> getting further from that goal.

I don't know that I can argue against that, except to say that it is 
without question that the Mac OS continues to be the easiest OS to use 
of the three major platforms. While it's certainly true that the MacOS 
has grown more complex over time, this is directly due to the need of 
the OS to meet user requirements, which have also grown more complex 
over time. Twenty years ago, I waited patiently as a modem negotiated a 
connection at 300 baud so that I could download a 100K file ... in only 
7 minutes! Fifteen years ago, I waited patiently as a single page wound 
its way slowly from the Postscript file I had created to being printed 
out on a laser printer ... a process that usually took several minutes 
per page (and almost always needed correction after it was printed!)

Today I don't have to wait patiently for anything ... my MPEG-2 video 
compression goes on in the background while I edit audio, surf the web, 
download files at a rate of 400K/sec, check my email and iChat with 
people ... all at the same time. I can create my own custom video DVDs, 
create memory books (real books) of my photos, buy music it would have 
taken me years to find on CD instantly, and so much more ... and all 
with only a minimal investment in learning as I went. Just yesterday, I 
was iChatting, faxing, web surfing, checking my email and my iCal and 
talking on the phone all at the same time -- and marveled for just a 
moment at how amazingly efficient I had become since those days where a 
whole afternoon was devoted to sending a few half-meg Pagemaker files 
over the phone (direct FTP connection) at 9600 baud back when I worked 
on a community newspaper. I'm doing things routinely today that were 
impossible dreams to me just ten years ago.

Sometimes I think we take all these advances for granted, and forget 
that they come with some (hopefully small) price tag attached.

_Chas_

The CPU speed wars are over. We won.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/