in panther i absolutely agree. it was awful.

in tiger, though, much better. when they did spotlight, they added some sort of notifications to the file system so that when a file changed/was added, spotlight could index it immediately. the added side ebenfit of that, was that finder got that notification as well, and is now as quick as windows.

it is kind of neat to have a smart folder searching for the word "foo" and then save a document with "foo" in it. You *might* make it to 1-one-thousand before it pops up, but i doubt it.

i don't use network shares too often, so i can't comment on them...