I agree that searching on Windows sucks but I guess there is a trade-off to be made. You can use very abstract APIs that will work for all kinds of file systems, whether a local disks, a DVD, a USB connected phone, or a network drive, but it will be slow and limited because you can only rely on the lowest common denominator. On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level, but it will only work for a specific target. So I can at least see how you can end up with what we have.