The #1 thing I don't like about Spotlight is the ugly blue menu UI that Apple has chosen for it and other searches. It is completely inconsistent with the rest of OS X. Give me a regular looking menu and I'll be happy.

The #2 thing I don't like is somebody can sit down in front of your machine while logged into your account and find absolutely every frickin' thing way way way too easily.

Much cheaper to type the following commands into Snow Leopard terminal window:

sudo mdutil -a -i off
sudo mdutil -E

Could do that in Panther as well with Command F. Again this does not require live content indexing. Nor did any of your other "uses".

Actually I don't believe I have seen one person say they type in a short phrase or keyword they remember using in a recent document. That is the only thing that actually requires content indexing. All the other uses can be accomplished with much less overhead.

Spotlight as an app launcher - I never thought of that.

It works great, thanks guys!

At the risk of sounding like a drooling Apple cultist, it never ceases to amaze me how many useful little functions I keep finding out about in OSX, after using it pretty extensively for many years.

I use Spotlight when I miss the SPOD. I hear Launchbar is good...

I don't like it - horrid interface and it never holds spacing,

I do use it for searching emails where I need a better search than mail.

I'd likely lose it but Mail won't search without it and it comes in useful from time to time but the interface is a non starter for me. Indexing is annoying but only when I do a rebuild with Onyx.

EasyFind does what I want.

I've never really used Spotlight, but, after this discussion, I might.

You are right, and I apologize for my tardiness.

I often type in a key word or phrase in order to find a document - not only recent, but older documents too. Very helpful.

I love Spotlight. I use it mostly as an app launcher, and sometimes to find documents.

Ditto. I use it frequently myself. If there's a search string that I use frequently, I just create a smart folder to save time.

However, due to the nature of a lot of programs that I use (graphic, 3d, etc.) I changed the shortcut for Spotlight to a slightly more convoluted command to ensure I don't invoke it by mistake: CTRL+OPT+CMD+SPACE.

I didn't mention it in my earlier post, but this is what I use Spotlight for all the time. I do a lot of research and writing and am constantly referring back to old articles, previous reports, etc. I'm a fairly organized person, but I'm amazed at the number of times that I have "found" things from the recent or distant past that are relevant to what I am currenlty working on.