Whenever I try to find a file in Tiger, as I could with Panther's Command-F, I get too many results -- Spotlight shows me too many things I don't need. So every time I hit Command-F, I need to reconfigure the search options to find Name Contains. What a pain!
But I found a way to get the old "Name Contains" default search back, using PlistEdit Pro 1.1.2. First, navigate to this file: /System: Library: CoreServices: Finder, then Control-click on the Finder and continue navigating to Contents: Resources: default_smart.plist. Make a backup of the file before you do anything else. Now replace all the text in that file with this text. Save the modified file, and restart the Finder. You can do that with Activity Monitor, or by Option-click-and-hold on the Finder icon in the dock. After a restart, you'll find that Command-F defaults to the 'Name Contains' search criteria.
[robg adds: I have edited this hint's writeup (but not the code) extensively -- OmiElGato is not a native English speaker, and I wanted to make sure that this hint was understandable by everyone, as it's clearly one of my favorite 10.4 tips thus far. I really hate the new Command-F behavior in the Finder, but that's a rant for another day. I don't have PlistEdit Pro, so I implemented the tip a bit differently -- I just used the Terminal. The only slight trickery (apart from needing to use sudo) is that the plist file needs to be converted to/from binary and XML to be worked on, as described in this hint. Once you have it in straight text, you can use vi or your favorite editor to make the changes. To change the default "contains" text from , change the string value What_File_you_need_By_OmiElGato to whatever you want. If you use my method, remember to convert back to binary when you're done editing ... and regardless of how you try this, please make a backup of the file before you start...]

