Search This!

I am beginning to loathe any search engine that isn't Google. Not just internet search engines, but every type of lame search engine I encounter. Here are some that come to mind recently...

1) Mail search - I despise any mail client that requires you to pick a specific field to search. I want to search my mail EVERYWHERE. For example, if looking for any emails referring to hockey, I don't care if it was in the message, in the title, or even in the email address (From: hockeymonkey16@yahoo.com). I just want it all! Only recently are some of the web-based email services (like Gmail) getting it right. Outlook Express is a notorious troglodyte.

2) My county library - I bet all county libraries have the same problem. The online catalog is sluggish at best, and again, you have to declare the field that you want to search (author, title, blah-blah). You should just be able to enter a search term and have it search every field.

3) Scientific/Professional Journals - I have experienced some good examples of professional search engines, which make it even more apparent how bad the bad ones are . The most annoying thing is searching for articles by an author. Good luck if the author's last name is Smith, etc. You will get WAY too many results. Most of the sites I have searched don't provide sufficient ways to use first name/initial, or you have to try EVERY combination (I. Freely, I. P. Freely, Irma P. Freely, ...). The articles should be cross-linked too. If you find one article, you should be able to click on an author's name to see other articles, or click on the reference citations to pull up the other articles. That would be nice.

Edit (2009-04-06): I am using Microsoft Project and I had to find and replace a name every time it appears in the project. I just learned that you can only search ONE FIELD AT A TIME. WTF? There are dozens of fields to potentially search. This is pathetic. I'm using the 2003 version. Does anybody know if they fixed this horrible lame feature in more recent additions?