Casey,
I think they are going for a consistent look and feel that has contect-sensitivty built in. Searching from the home page searches the whole site, searching from the forum page searches the forums, etc. In some ways it feels likje a good idea, in other ways it feels confusing because it is hard to know the context.
We will see what searching in the new portal looks like in a few days...
Thanks,
Joe Kaufman