This "error" message really needs to be fixed. I searched for "Never Can Say Goodbye" by "The Jackson Five" and got that error message. It's not an issue of typing too many characters (each search window is limited to number of characters you can enter)... when you've reached the window limit you simply can't type anymore. More importantly, everyone is, of course, SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING SPECIFIC. I should be able to search on anything I want regardless of # of characters. But my search for the Jackson Five proves it's a problem with Limewire. That song doesn't have many characters in it's title, is a popular song and isn't "obscure" by any means. Sure I can find it to download, but the fact that I have to try 2 or 3 different combinations of info to avoid that error message is ridiculous.

Yes Zephyros, totally agree with you on this one.
I have encounterd the error message many a time.
When serching for obscure files, it can be very specific
Needs looking at by the limewire team.

See Search is too Specific (click on link) The design of keeping the search size limited helps to reduce traffic & keep speeds up. I think you'd be complaining more if the search results & downld results became much slower.

i Can see why you wanna speed things up for us, but i've never seen a searching speed problem from typing too long a name, and in the long rrun i see this error messege being a bigger hassle to most users than it taking a few extra seconds to find the song they want, i personally can stand it when i know exactly what song i want and have to look through several others because i was forced to severaly shorten the name, so thanx for the try, but i think most users would rather be able to type the whole name in, course this is just one guys opinion, other wise, ecxellent program, thanx

Well this ain't Limewire site! This is a forum & is not owned or run by Limewire. It is run by volunteers who help out people who have questions about their particular p2p client. That's right this site caters for more than 'just' LW users.

IMHO If you can't understand the logic & practical concept of sending a multiple chain search & how it has to interact with the databases of hash info then sure why don't you design one that has no limits or can type a keyword search of over 100 characters & see how fast it runs. The larger the search is the faster the search will run out of energy or else take over 30 mins to get back to you. I've used another p2p program where it does just that .. takes well over 30 mins to complete its search cycle.
I've used LW for over 3 yrs & have no issue at all with the search that's available. The more search options that are added, the more people query why they don't behave as well as they hoped. Using what's available & learning how to maximise them by varying ones search, etc. helps.

ODD.. I have probably done thousands of searches in the past two years on LimeWire, never saw that message yet!!! (Is it new?)

When you search on Google, for example, it omits any common words like THE, A, OF... and you can only put in up to 10 words.

Try using KEYWORDS -- not common words -- when you search. You may see better results by leaving out common words (like THE, SAY, CAN) and using only the more unique words of a title or artist.

EG: || Never Goodbye || Jackson Five ||

and, you may see much better results to choose from... more hosts... etc... for faster downloads!?

Still an annoying feature, whatever reason anyone gives. But thank you for your explanations, LOTR.