[ajross]

Sure, but I don't think that's the right criteria. Any task can be made faster by associating a fixed button with it. But every fixed button has a cost. If you do a ton of "searching" then sure, this is good. My personal usage would be improved with a "go directly to email" button. Most people don't search that much. Or if they do, they do it from a desktop widget (even faster IMHO). I don't think it's an appropriate usage for the very precious physical space on the front panel.

[Zhenya]

Interesting point about the desktop widget. Initially, i believe in 1.0 and 1.5, you could click in the widget and type.

After that the widget was updated to launch the search app just like the search button. It basically became a 4 column wide search link.