Can't search for 'XP?'

I wanted to ask if people are going to buy Windows XP. So I put in ‘XP’ in the text search box (to see if there are previous topics on this), did the other boxes, tried three times & each time search results gave me a message of “Please specify either some search words or a username to search by.”

So the board doesn’t recognize Microsoft’s new operating system as a valid word for search today?

The search engine will not look for any string of less than three consecutive characters. There is also a list of excluded words, such as “and,” “the,” etc.

Afraid not. The search engine doesn’t do phrase searches. It would give the hamsters a heart attack.

Maybe if you searched for XP in its more commonly known versions:

“That #!!!**@XP

or “Gdm*MF XP”

thank you UncleBeer, Im sure that’ll come in handy.

Hmmph. I suppose multiple search request boxes with boolean operators is out of the question, then?
Find all threads where

contents includes “XP” and
contents does not include “experiment” or “expos” and
(last post < 7/1/01 or
username includes “anthracite”) and
Forum is not “About this message board” and
Forum is not “Comments on Cecil’s Columns” and
Status is not “locked”

You can combine usernames and search words, as long as everything meets the three-letter requirement. The “not ATMB” thing can’t be done in one swell foop, but since you can’t search “all fora” any more, anyway, that would just be one less forum you’d search.

Believe me, I’d love a grep-powered regexp search engine as much as the next nerd, but unfortunately, that’s not something we can change, and it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to, either.

I don’t see why not.

Got multiple windows open Fonz?

Hey, I know I wrote a topic ‘are you going to buy windows xp’?
in My Humble Opinion, but doesn’t come up with subject searches of ‘windows xp’ or ‘xpxxx’

Maybe someday.