I love Windows 7. One of its best features is the speed of searching the entire content of my more than 2TB of storage on the start menu. However, indexing all this content does take some processor power. But what about your public computers? Users are storing data there so they’re not looking for that file they’re not sure where they saved. Yes, typing “exc[enter]” is a bit faster than finding Excel in the menu system (but maybe not if there’s not an icon on the desktop) but that’s a minor convenience.
So, why not turn off the search box and all that indexing and give the processing power back to running programs? (I would especially recommend this if you’ve upgraded an older computer which not as much power to begin with.) The folks over at How-To Geek have full instructions with screenshots on how to do just this. (The short version is: Control Panel | Programs and Features | Turn Windows features on or off | Uncheck Windows Search | Confirm | Reboot.)
End result: no search box on the start menu or in Windows explorer along with some recovered processor cycles from the lack of indexing.


