Spotlight vs MSN Desktop Search

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maccrazymaccrazy
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I've performed a quick index on my PC and even though the test is a little biased MSN beats spotlight - by miles. It is literally finding as I type. This is on a 2.25GHz P4 against a 1.67GHz G4. But the HD difference is 100GB 5400RPM on the mac and I assume 40GB 7200RPM on the PC.



I was just wondering on similar systems does MSN win? Is this because it supports less formats?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 57
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Spotlight brings up the results as I type so not quite sure what's going on with you.
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  • Reply 2 of 57
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MacCrazy

    I've performed a quick index on my PC and even though the test is a little biased MSN beats spotlight - by miles. It is literally finding as I type. This is on a 2.25GHz P4 against a 1.67GHz G4. But the HD difference is 100GB 5400RPM on the mac and I assume 40GB 7200RPM on the PC.



    I was just wondering on similar systems does MSN win? Is this because it supports less formats?



    Um...yea the HDDs make a huge differance, get a 7200rpm drive for the system drive on the mac and do the same tese...btw, how much ram u got in the Mac v the PC?
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  • Reply 3 of 57
    jwink3101jwink3101 Posts: 739member
    I also wonder what Google does as far as matching Spotlight. Anyway, full system integration will almost always be better than a 3rd party app running on top of the system as a application
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  • Reply 4 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    It's a PowerBook - google was fast but then results were in various pages - MSN is very well copied off Spotlight! I have 1GB RAM and the PC has 256MB.



    What specs do the people have with instant spotlight searches? Maybe I need to perform a re-index.
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  • Reply 5 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    In addition Spotlight searches the whole computer and MSN just does the Documents folder.
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  • Reply 6 of 57
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    MSN will search the whole drive as well. You just need to enable indexing of all hard disks. Then it will search all files.
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  • Reply 7 of 57
    regreg Posts: 832member
    Mine is an instant search, finds as I type. pb 17 1Ghz w/ 1 GB ram, 60 G HD with 43 G being used. I did my search for a photo in iPhoto with 11,159 pictures. None of my other libraries is as big so this is my best test.



    reg
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  • Reply 8 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gene Clean

    MSN will search the whole drive as well. You just need to enable indexing of all hard disks. Then it will search all files.



    I was referring to the defaults.
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  • Reply 9 of 57
    squozensquozen Posts: 66member
    It's instant on my 1.5Ghz PowerBook with an 80Gb 5400RPM drive.
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  • Reply 10 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Squozen

    It's instant on my 1.5Ghz PowerBook with an 80Gb 5400RPM drive.



    how much space are you using?
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  • Reply 11 of 57
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MacCrazy

    It's a PowerBook - google was fast but then results were in various pages - MSN is very well copied off Spotlight! I have 1GB RAM and the PC has 256MB.



    What specs do the people have with instant spotlight searches? Maybe I need to perform a re-index.



    1GB of RAM. 160 GB 7200 RPM HD, which is around half full, and probably soon to be joined by a larger cousin.
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  • Reply 12 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    I tried a re-index and it doesn't seem any better - odd!
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  • Reply 13 of 57
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    Old POS 733MHz w/1.25GB ram and an 80GB 7200rpm drive... hits start appearing instantly... finishes search in about 3-4 seconds
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  • Reply 14 of 57
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ZO

    Old POS 733MHz w/1.25GB ram and an 80GB 7200rpm drive... hits start appearing instantly... finishes search in about 3-4 seconds



    that's the same as mine - i just thought all results were expected instantly - like MSN manages.
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  • Reply 15 of 57
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MacCrazy

    I was referring to the defaults.



    You can change the defaults.
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  • Reply 16 of 57
    algolalgol Posts: 833member
    The MSN Desktop Search and Spotlight aren't really on the same level if I understand the technology correctly. Spotlight it integrated into the OS and the kernel while MSN is just a program running in the background. There is a huge difference and thus comparing them is sort of tricky. One must keep in mind that spotlight is brand new to the Mac OS and probably will get faster and better as the updates come and go.
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  • Reply 17 of 57
    kompressorkompressor Posts: 26member
    MacCrazy:



    I just downloaded MSN Desktop Search to test out your findings on the following outdated PC hardware:



    PIII 550 MHz, Quantum 20GB EIDE HD and 192 megs of Ram.



    D@MN !!! ... MSN Desktop search (speedwise) puts Spotlight to shame ... I'm shocked and personally a little disappointed in this ... I really wanted Spotlight to be faster. I've compared subjectively to a dual 1.8 G5 with 256 Megs of ram and an Imac G5 with 256 megs as well ...



    This has me thinking ... why does MacOSX still seem to be slow in some many little ways ... my Ancient PC hardware is a POS and subjectively I was shocked at how fast MSN desktop Search is [IT's not nearly instant ---- ITS INSTANT as in RIGHT FRIGGIN NOW] ... sigh ... we mac guys like to think that Apple OS engineers are the best but maybe Microsoft has something on them ... don't know ... just stunned right now that my ancient PC does DS searching faster than Spotlight on state of the art Apple Hardware ... [i was seriously expecting my PC to be DOG SLOW]
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  • Reply 18 of 57
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,464member
    Personlly I'm a bit miffed.



    Downloaded MSN Search to my PIII 700Mhz with 512MB of RAM. Let it index hoping to see this speed that people talk about and it never came. I found it to be clunkier feeling than Spolight on a Mac.



    I do find Google Desktop to be faster. In fact I'd love if my company installed this



    http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/index.html



    Maybe I'll try again later because I'm obviously not seeing the speed that others are.
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  • Reply 19 of 57
    texas floodtexas flood Posts: 37member
    If you create a new file with some unique contents, does MSN Search see those contents instantly or do you have to wait for some indexing process? One impressive trait of Spotlight is that any new files are instantly indexed when saved to the hard drive.



    On my 1 GHz TiBook, Spotlight results begin filling in as I type. After I finish typing it usually takes 5-10 seconds to complete filling in the results. My main user account contains about 15 Gbytes of data, mostly in Office documents and e-mail. I have developed a pretty intricate filing system that allows me to navigate right to the documents I need, and Spotlight can find them faster than I can most of the time.
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  • Reply 20 of 57
    chrisgchrisg Posts: 239member
    Searches with MSN desktop are very fast however they are not live meaning once a search is performed any new information about a file isn't reflected. This also includes moving or deleting a file. If you move a file and then do a search for it the index doesn't register the move but it still shows the result, clicking on the file results in a error that the file can't be found. However if you click on the icon in the task-bar and click "Index Now" it will find those changes.



    Indexing also occurs if you don't use your computer for a few seconds.
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