Changes in Quick Search/Search
This is by design - see https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-15653 for an explanation and the reasoning.

Overall, I think this change was the right one - I worked with someone at a California-based public health organization who could never look up "California Department of Public Health", because basically all the organizations in their database had one of those words in the name!  I'm sorry to hear that this change is a bug rather than an improvement for you.

I think Search Builder is a pretty good solution to this problem - you said you want something "better/quicker".  I'm not sure how you're using Search Builder, but I would use "last name" "regex", then the names separated by the pipe character (this one: |).  If that's still too much, and you're a developer (or have access to one), you can of course reverse the code changes in CRM-15653 on your local installation.  If you go that route, be sure to check out CRM-15442, which is very similar.