I have Home edition on my home desktop, and I see updates way more than 3 times per year as well. It doesn't really bug me unless the update takes more than a few minutes.
The search is absolutely terrible. And it's inconsistent. Sometimes I can type "no" and it'll come up with Notepad++ immediately. Other times I have to get all the way to the first + before it finds it. And still other times, it can't find it at all. That goes for all programs too, not just Notepad++.
I've somewhat tried using tools like Everything [0] but never given them more than a few tries before uninstalling. Maybe I should do it again.