search utility - locate32

so my buddy john was telling me about this handy utility called locate32 that has ported the locate linux/unix utility to the windows platform.  john has used google desktop search and microsoft desktop searches before, but finds that doing simple searches are difficult with those tools and that the indexes take up lots of space with a big index that always needs to be run.  i actually use microsoft desktop search on my laptop now and find it very useful because most of the items i search for are in email and it integrates very nicely with outlook.  john's use-cases are slightly different though and he usually knows some basic criteria such as file type, size, creation date, directory structure that the simple index is based on.  i must agree that i've often missed files with the ms search and have to launch the search companion, which takes a few clicks and isn't indexed, so it takes longer.  another use case this tool can be used for is for searching non-local archives (dvd's or unattached drives) that are indexed locally.