How about sorting by subject, email size or whether an attachment exists or not? Search is great, but only brings you to the item you want. After that you might want to explore related items (such as a mail from x that contained attachment y you can't remember the name of).

Outlook has a different philosophy of working with data (sort instead of search) and I've noticed more than once that some people refuse to make that mental switch.

What's happening here is consistency - our nearly obsessive desire to be (and appear to be) consistent with what we have already done. Once we've made a choice, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Usura sung a great song once. It was called "Open your mind".