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Some Performance Questions and Suggestions

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nontroppo:
On my normal laptop I never bothered with performance as FARR was snappy enough. However on an older machine with a slower HD, I notice significant delays on startup. So I used the excellent Filemon from Sysinternals to log all file activity by FARR.

On startup, FARR seems to perform a complete scan through its specified folders. This requires ~3800 open/read/writes to be performed. This seems pointless as I have it set to show the history on startup.

Then when each letter is typed, FARR rescans everything again, another 3800 file operations per letter of the incremental search.

First off, can we stop FARR from reading the folders on startup, just read its history list. Second, some kind of directory cache would drop file access a lot and speed up the incremental search. I'm not suggesting a permanent cache, only a memory cache. It may consume some extra memory, but I believe you/Windows flush memory when FARR is hidden after a launch anywayso that would not be permanent.

mouser:
it shouldnt be performing a special scan of folders at startup until you start searching... i'll have to check that out.

as for caching searches... this gets to the whole idea of whether to use an index/database.. which we may add in a later version.
windows itself should cache directory indices which should reduce search time on incremental search - trying to add our own caching probably wouldnt do too much good.  using a real file index might though, so we should talk about this again in a bit, at least as an option at some point.. or piggybacking on another index (like google/msn/yahoo desktop search).

kfitting:
While I do not have any hard data, I was wondering if there was any way to speed up FindRun upon hitting the pause/break key.  It seems to take a second or two, during which you cant type any search characters in.  Just wondering.... version 1.0.67.43.678.07.18 works great so far!

Kevin

edit: Actually the memory cache would be interesting... especially if it went away when FindRun was minimized.  Memory usage doesnt matter while FindRun is up and working.

mouser:
the delay on startup seems to be windows freeing most of the memory while the program is minimized..
thus it only happens after you haven't used the program in a while (try hitting break key 10 times in a row to toggle on and off and it should be fast).

i could probably make an option that tells F&R to not give up its memory when minimized, which would make it instantaneously startup when you hit break key, but which would make it use same amount of memory when displayed as when hidden.  should i add that?

kfitting:
What's one more option? ;)  Heh heh, I'd be willing to give it a try if that's the cause of the slowdown.  FindRun takes 5 meg of memory while open on my machine.  I would however make the option well documented so people would not get all excited by this "low footprint" app taking up "so much" memory  (for people like me, in other words!).  But, I'd be willing to put up with some more memory usage.

Kevin

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