About #1, it just takes something like Beagle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_%28software%29) integrated with the file explorer, MS does not even need to touch the filesystem. But I never tought it was that usefull, and I can't get all the hype around the concept.

About #3, yep, XP's pinball is just great, I'd expect the number of good games to go up in newer releases, not down.