The search bar isn't very useful to me. For one thing, I was surprised when it didn't show up, only to discover that I had to install beagle before the search bar would appear (and I can't figure out why I should waste my system resources by running beagle).

However, one feature of the Ubuntu System Panel (which appears to be abandoned) that I can hardly live without is the search box that searches menu entries on name, description, and command. It provides a quick way to access whichever menu item I'm looking for without navigating through endless submenus.

I think that the behavior I'm suggesting is much more logical. The menus are for launching programs, so logically a search box would search programs. Nautilus is for browsing the filesystem, so a filesystem search box belongs in Nautilus--not the main menu.

Other information:
I previously posted this bug downstream: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slab/+bug/105334