A Vista feature I fell in love with immediately is the Start-menu Search box. Instead of digging through an insane number of submenus to get to a program, I just need to type a few letters from its name. For Irfanview, my image editor and viewer of choice (even in Vista!), I just type IRF and press Enter.
However, as I've worked with Vista and added more stuff to my installation, I've found that the way the Start Search box works can be a little deceptive. If you want a given shortcut to show up at the top of the search list, that shortcut must be in the Start menu's Programs hierarchy. It won't show up at the top of that list if you have it in Quick Launch -- although the Quick Launch folder is indexed for search. If you have something in Quick Launch and you do a Start Search for it, it'll show up in the "Files" subdivision of the search results, but not in Programs.
So, to sum up: If you want to have the quickest possible access to a shortcut from Start Search, name it properly and place it somewhere in the All Programs menu hierarchy.
One nice little variation on this tip: if there's a quick two or three-letter code you want to associate with the program so it shows up in Search, you can create a second shortcut and name it that -- or just rename the existing shortcut if you're sure there will be no confusion.
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