I'm an "IT professional" and, worse, an old IT professional (closing on 40.) I strongly disliked the idea of instant search when it launched, but to my surpris

I'm an "IT professional" and, worse, an old IT professional (closing on 40.) I strongly disliked the idea of instant search when it launched, but to my surprise, I'm actually finding it very useful. I've been able to train myself to avoid focusing on the results pane until I get deep into my query string (3rd or 4th word.) That tends to be where I organically pause anyway, while deciding whether I should tack on another word to my long-tail queries. By that point in the query process, the noisy and wildly-irrelevant entries have already been weeded out, and I can start focusing on the results pane. Interestingly, on several occasions recently, I've seen a promising result flicker past as I'm in the process of adding that 4th word to my query. When I'm done typing, I see that none of the results are as good as the one that flickered past when I had just 3 words in my query, so I delete the last word and voila. Result that I might not have found without instant search. I'm still not crazy about some of the larger implications (pushing most users towards the same query strings, etc.) but am finding it surprisingly useful on a personal level. FWIW, YMMV, etc...