Amen. I go get coffee when I search my Windows machine at work.
Yes...me too...and when I come back, the files I know exist and that I've searched for haven't been found 80% of the time. Mind you, this is under XP, I haven't tested under Vista...nor do I want to. Any company that can't get a piece of software working decently by the 3rd version is one I have no interest in. So I don't care if Vista's worked out all the problems and if all my woes would be gone if I used it...I don't give a shit about MS.
Even on my 3 and 5 year old machines it's fast enough (although it should be faster) for me to never bother to navigate to the Applications/Utilities folder: I just type application names nowadays.
...I'm actually going to move to a flat file system. No more seperating PDF from other documents. Everything is going in one Documents folder and I'll have Smart Folders that handle the segmentation
ie: a PDF Smart Folder that watches for all filetypes ending in .pdf.
You can then see the power of Spotlight and Smart Folders. No more tedium of navigating a folder structure to find or save a particular document in a unique file format.
Add metadata to what you described and I agree 100%.
Why create structures and complications that aren't necessary? With metadata I can create smart folders based on client names, projects and/or dates. And I can reorganize them much more easily than I could under any other system.
I'm planning to move to the Mac soon and I was wondering if you could tell me how useful the Spotlight search is.
Does it really work? Don't you ever have to do an actual, slow, system-wide search?
I'm asking that because I've tried Google Desktop and I don't like the way it works (it often uses too much of my CPU and misses some file). I've also heard that Vista's instant search is kinda fake (it can't find many of the files).
If it's currently not good enough - Is it better in Leopard? (I've heard they improved it there...)
Thanks
At first I didn't think it would be that useful but I use it almost every day. I was using it on a 450MHz single processor G4 and it wasn't that slow. However, I know have a 2.16GHz MBP and it flys.
I do wish it had search options such as by a date range.
I do wish it had search options such as by a date range.
it does have that option..
hit command-F in finder. It gives you a large number of options including date created/modified/last opened etc etc. To do a date range just add a "since xx" rule and a "before xx" rule.
I use Spotlight frequently; it works good in most respects. There's a Freeware program called Spotlaser, and it is way better than Spotlight. The only downside is that there's no way of replacing Spotlight with Spotlaser in the Menu bar. With Spotlaser you can perform much more specific searches than Spotlight, such as only searching Text files, for example.
Comments
Amen. I go get coffee when I search my Windows machine at work.
Yes...me too...and when I come back, the files I know exist and that I've searched for haven't been found 80% of the time. Mind you, this is under XP, I haven't tested under Vista...nor do I want to. Any company that can't get a piece of software working decently by the 3rd version is one I have no interest in. So I don't care if Vista's worked out all the problems and if all my woes would be gone if I used it...I don't give a shit about MS.
...I'm actually going to move to a flat file system. No more seperating PDF from other documents. Everything is going in one Documents folder and I'll have Smart Folders that handle the segmentation
ie: a PDF Smart Folder that watches for all filetypes ending in .pdf.
You can then see the power of Spotlight and Smart Folders. No more tedium of navigating a folder structure to find or save a particular document in a unique file format.
Add metadata to what you described and I agree 100%.
Why create structures and complications that aren't necessary? With metadata I can create smart folders based on client names, projects and/or dates. And I can reorganize them much more easily than I could under any other system.
Hey,
I'm planning to move to the Mac soon and I was wondering if you could tell me how useful the Spotlight search is.
Does it really work? Don't you ever have to do an actual, slow, system-wide search?
I'm asking that because I've tried Google Desktop and I don't like the way it works (it often uses too much of my CPU and misses some file). I've also heard that Vista's instant search is kinda fake (it can't find many of the files).
If it's currently not good enough - Is it better in Leopard? (I've heard they improved it there...)
Thanks
At first I didn't think it would be that useful but I use it almost every day. I was using it on a 450MHz single processor G4 and it wasn't that slow. However, I know have a 2.16GHz MBP and it flys.
I do wish it had search options such as by a date range.
Bottom line: I like it but it needs improvement.
I do wish it had search options such as by a date range.
it does have that option..
hit command-F in finder. It gives you a large number of options including date created/modified/last opened etc etc. To do a date range just add a "since xx" rule and a "before xx" rule.
http://members.optusnet.com.au/frovil/spotlaser.html
Spotlaser's search options
compared to
Spotlight's search options