Syncracy - yeah, that's a better than average version, IMHO. I like that you can put an operator on each row. Most of them either do all ANDs, which is fine, I guess, or let you do all ORs, which after the second term is useful about .00000001% of the time. (Says a guy who once built a query that had over 100 ORs in it. But even my 100 OR query had a couple ANDs and NOTs. ;-)
Obviously, just typing what you want in a search box is about a zillion times easier once you know how it works. Which is why I think it would be way cool if such a tool showed you the query.
Kirk - Ah, durr, I dunno. I basically cruised right by that feature. I thought, "Oh, filters. Instead of the widgets on the contact sheets", and moved on. I didn't see the search box, which I only now see on Keywords. (Which doesn't seem to be working at the moment, BTW.) But yes, once all the relevant fields, like the caption(!), are there, that's pretty much the thing. Maybe with the ability to specify an OR, or particularly a NOT for individual rows. It would be nice if the user could put a few terms ANDed together in the find box. So she could do "john smith" instead of "john" on one row and "smith" on the next. Or maybe "john smith" should be an exact phrase instead. There's a topic for debate.
There's a thread elsewhere where somebody complained that that tool is cramped in the left rail. Maybe it should jump out as a big model, like the Template dialog. And if that were to be the case, I'd like to see a duplicate Quick Search box in it, so it would be one stop shopping.