I don't understand the people for whom Spotlight works. I tend to open Spotlight, and start typing in the name of a file I'm looking for. Consistently, reproducibly, for many different files, it'll fill in the name of the file at a certain point, but then, if I keep typing that very name, it'll switch to a different match.
That is, if the name is `abcdefgh` and I type `abc`, then it'll complete it; but if momentum carries me and I type `abcd`, then it'll drop the desired file entirely off the list of suggestions, and give me a different, non-matching one.
Huh, interesting, because that exact problem is one of my key complaints with windows search, while I've never noticed it with spotlight -- and I've been using spotlight daily since Tiger.
Well, that's not quite true, for a few years after spotlight was released it would get slow after a while, so I mainly stuck with Quicksilver. Eventually spotlight got faster, but I never had that particular problem with it, even though I very regularly have that particular problem on Windows.
That is, if the name is `abcdefgh` and I type `abc`, then it'll complete it; but if momentum carries me and I type `abcd`, then it'll drop the desired file entirely off the list of suggestions, and give me a different, non-matching one.