I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important. Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me

I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important. Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course. Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages) As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs). So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.