Many of the complaints about the behaviour of the Ancestry pages are not the fault of Ancestry at all, but of the user's browser and its settings. Always log out of Ancestry when you've finished, and don't be lazy and stay logged in all the time (as I have also been guilty of in the past). Clearing out your browser history and cache can also make a big difference. There is a forum thread about it on this site.
As for the "new/old search" debate - I use both, but I find myself using the new more than the old. If you give it a chance, you'll find that it does come up with some quite useful stuff.
