Auto-scrolling of list view in Finder windows sometimes doesn't work

Question

I've noticed a minor bug in 10.4 that doesn't seem to show up in 10.3.9, and I thought I'd comment on it here because it's mildly annoying, and I'm not sure that anyone at Apple is aware of the issue.
My Pictures folder is pretty large -- I have over 6,000 items in it, some of which are themselves folders. I've got this folder set to list view. My typical usage pattern is to open a Finder window for my Pictures folder, start typing the first few characters of a file name, and then search from there. In 10.4.3 and later (up to and including 10.4.6 as of this writing), if the file in question is outside the viewport of the Finder window, the thumb on the scrollbar will jump to the correct location, but the actual viewport won't scroll to match; therefore, the file that gets highlighted isn't visible.
The work-around is to manually scroll the contents of the window so that I'm "closer" to the file I'm looking for; alternately, I can type characters to get the ball rolling, and then hit the up or down arrow key a couple times (once won't do the trick) which will force the viewport to jump to the correct scroll location. Using this second method, I then have to move the selection back to the file, which is annoying since it's forcing me to use extra keystrokes.
Interestingly enough, if I am careful and click on the scrollbar thumb without moving it too much (after typing the first few characters of the filename I'm looking for), the viewport will usually "snap to" the appropriate position. This suggests that the logic to auto-scroll the contents of a Finder window got subtly broken between Panther and Tiger. It just seems weird to me that the scrollbar thumb would jump without the viewport following suit automatically.
This wasn't a problem in 10.3.9. I realize that we're being encouraged to use Spotlight and other search features, but since my pictures directory is already an alphabetic list view of files, why should I be forced to do a Spotlight search when I know what it is I'm after?
Dual 2.0 GHz G5   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

I've been having the same problem (though I haven't looked at the console yet to verify the same exact error).
There doesn't seem to be a situation that I can identify to cause the problem (i.e. waking from sleep mode), so it's difficult to reproduce consistently. The error seems to happen randomly. Last night I was getting the error every time I sent a single message. So I'd create and send a message, and then the next message I'd try to create or reply to, I couldn't. I'd have to quit Mail and start it again to gain functionality.
When I do have the problem where the compose window isn't created when replying, I also can not start a new message, note, or forward a message. Basically, no new windows can pop up besides the windows that are already there in Mail. When I quit mail, every window I tried to create by replying, making a new message, or forwarding, appears in the draft folder, just before the program closes. Then, the next time I open Mail all the windows appear that I tried to create, with no text in them. Very strange. Looks like this poster has a similar problem.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1197152&tstart=1020
I'm curious if this is a bug, or something our machines just can't handle? I see that we all have very similarly spec'd PowerBooks.