You may have noticed or suspected that your computer feels slower after installing Tiger. It might be a Spotlight problem and Sonar might be able to help you.
You can easily determine whether you have a Spotlight-related slowdown.
Launch the Activity Monitor program (it is located in the Applications/Utilities folder)
In the Filter field at the top of the window, type "mdimport". The list will update to show one process called mdimport. This is Spotlight's background indexing program.
Look in the %CPU column. This shows how much of your processor the mdimport program is consuming. On a well-tuned Mac, mdimport should consume very little CPU.
Keep the Activity Monitor window in the background and keep an eye on the CPU column during your work day. If you see the CPU column increase to 20% or more, or stay above 10% for more than a few seconds at a time, you may have a Spotlight slowdown.
If you think you have a Spotlight slowdown, launch Sonar and click Sonar's Start Listening button. Make sure you check Show hidden files. Keep an eye on both Sonar and Activity Monitor. When you see the CPU usage for mdimport spike, you will also see some file activity in the Sonar window.
If you find files that cause mdimport to spike, you can add their parent folders to the Spotlight Privacy List. Click the Apple menu and then click System Preferences. In the window that appears, click Spotlight and then click the Privacy tab. Then drag a folder into the list.
For other Spotlight problems, or to disable Spotlight completely, we recommend Spotless by Fixamac Software.