Full-text search queries cause system to crawl with larger datasets

We only have about 4000 activities, but the system just dies with the additions made to full-text search. Looking at these queries shows they are written "old style" with comma inner joins which can be really inefficient.

For example this one:

$contactSQL[] = "
SELECT ca.id
FROM civicrm_activity ca, civicrm_activity_target cat, civicrm_contact c, civicrm_email e
LEFT JOIN civicrm_option_group og ON og.name = 'activity_type'
LEFT JOIN civicrm_option_value ov ON ( ov.option_group_id = og.id )
WHERE cat.activity_id = ca.id
AND cat.target_contact_id = c.id
AND ( c.display_name LIKE {$this->_text} OR
( e.email LIKE {$this->_text} AND cat.target_contact_id = e.contact_id AND
ca.activity_type_id = ov.value AND ov.name IN ('Inbound Email', 'Email') ) )
";

should be rewritten more like:

SELECT ca.id
FROM civicrm_activity ca INNER JOIN civicrm_activity_target cat ON cat.activity_id = ca.id
INNER JOIN civicrm_contact c ON cat.target_contact_id = c.id
INNER JOIN civicrm_email e ON cat.target_contact_id = e.contact_id
LEFT JOIN civicrm_option_group og ON og.name = 'activity_type'
LEFT JOIN civicrm_option_value ov ON ( ov.option_group_id = og.id AND ca.activity_type_id = ov.value )
WHERE ( c.display_name LIKE {$this->_text} OR
( e.email LIKE {$this->_text} AND ov.name IN ('Inbound Email', 'Email') ) )