On Windows Vista and every subsequent version of Windows, if I search for a file and include the entire C:\ drive, I might very well have time to make tea or a sandwich while the search results come in. On Windows XP, using the search dialog with the animated dog, I can search the entire C:\ drive and expect it to be done in a minute or two, if not in seconds.
It can’t just be nostalgia; I can replicate these results on period-accurate hardware today. What changed with Vista to make file searching so much slower, even with indexing enabled?
Only by virtue of it not also searching the internet for shit. It still took forever to find anything on a large drive. But that could just be because we all had slow spinning platter hard drives and not SSDs. However, the fact I can expect to wait 5-10 minutes for a search of a file I know to exist on my current system, which is the same as back when I was on XP tells me that the newer software may just suck complete balls.
There’s a term for what you are describing: enshittification