[angdis]

OK, but even now Windows folks have largely given up on pressing <windows>/<All Programs> and looking for what they want.

There's simply too much stuff on a typical computer these days for a user to pick out what they want from a dropdown, yes, even if nested.

It is the same problem that Yahoo once had back in the day when it tried to "Categorize" the internet. At some point such attempts at categorization break down and you gotta look at more sophisticated strategies for search.

[csydas]

Well, I think this is sort of where Spotlight on OS X came from. Spotlight was pushed pretty hard when it came out as the new way to interact with your files, and for the most part it has lived up to its claims, allowing you to search concepts or text within a file and get nigh instant results, and it has only gotten better with SSDs now being default in so many Macs.

Of the users I've worked with over the last 10 years, many older users still hang on to rigid folder hierarchies, but I have noticed some users who are used to Spotlight and the faster Windows searches doing away with these strict hierarchies in favor of just a really well indexed search.