I was having a search issue where I wasn't getting complete search results in Mail.app. In a Mail search the "entire message" search field was dimmed and non-functional. It was not obvious this was a Spotlight issue, so I wasted a lot of time and effort on trashing Mail preferences, and rebuilding Mailboxes, and other things within Mail.app when the problem was really a Spotlight issue. When I eventually figure this out and tried to reindex Spotlight using a Terminal command, I got an error message. Evidently my Spotlight was disabled somehow? I figured out how to re-enable it, and then reindexed, and all was fine.
Needless to say, this process of troubleshooting was longer than I'd like to admit. In the interim, I installed Google Desktop Search as a replacement for my crippled Mail.app/Spotlight search. After I repaired Spotlight, I decided to test these two search apps head-to- head. I selected three rather obscure terms that I knew had many hits, and searched in both. To my surprise, Google came up short on all three. But when I compared the results, the only thing missing was most of the Safari Web History link hits, which to me weren't that important. In each search, Google did report finding one or two Safari History hits, but Spotlight was finding 10 or 20. I'm slightly baffled at why one specific type of file would be under-represented in my tests? The results for emails, files, folders, etc. was all otherwise identical for both. I've barely used Google Desktop, but it searches very fast, and gets nearly identical results as Spotlight. I think the results are easier to browse than Spotlight. I know people have complained of the overhead for Spotlight. My results indicate that if you're having Spotlight issues, you might consider disabling Spotlight completely and using Google Desktop Search instead. Google is fast, and seems to work well. I'm slightly baffled at why one specific type of file would be under-represented in my tests. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
