You may wish to mention or make it clear that you can use an asterisk as a wild card in the search text.

I'm not sure the experience has been 'faster' for me over the past couple of days, but that could just be the fact that the system was being rolled out.  Again I am not sure of the larger thumbnails for the products, but that is a personal aesthetic.

The revised store looks, however, to be a nice upgrade.

On the whole, a nice change for the better!