In many ways, search in Windows Vista is quite a bit nicer than what it used to be in XP with Windows Desktop Search installed - search boxes in different parts of the system, like Explorer and Control Panel windows, are context-sensitive; low priority I/O reduces the performance hit of indexing to almost nothing; search folders are easy to create and are first-class citizens in the system; and so on.

However, there's one feature that I've been missing ever since I migrated my machines over to Vista - aliases. In my review of WDS back in 2005, I described the deskbar as "the run dialog on steroids" and wrote - "one of the unique features of Windows Desktop Search that none of the other desktop search apps have is the concept of aliasing. This is a killer feature for power-users."

Oddly enough, Microsoft didn't include the ability to create custom aliases out-of-the-box in Vista. Start++, a just-released, super-useful tool, adds that missing piece back in, along with some goodies of its own. I'll let Brandon describe it in detail. I love how it integrates with the command shell, and Search Actions are just awesome.

You definitely want to check this out. Vista should have shipped with something like this built-in. Nicely done, Brandon! :)