GRO Puts Birth & Death Indexes for England and Wales Online

FreeBMD, Ancestry and Findmypast have had indexes to England and Wales civil registration available for years.
Now the General Register Office has added a little extra value in their birth and death indexes just made available online.
Births, from mid-1837 to 1915, include the mother's maiden name, not previously available before mid-1911.
Deaths, to 1957, include the age at death, previously only available after 1865.
To search you will need a free account, so another user name (email address) and password to remember. Start at www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/
Searches require a minimum of last name, gender and year with, and this is a handicap, a range of only up to +/-2 years.
You can specify other information, such as registration district and mother's maiden name for birth searches. It would be helpful to be able to search on mother's maiden name without specifying a child's last name. Alas.
Results are presented in a tabular form which can be cut and pasted into a spreadsheet although each result occupies two lines. An option to download the data in a single line per result fully spreadsheet compatible format would be nice
Owing to the limit in year range available I will likely continue to prefer searching on FreeBMD moving over to the GRO site for the additional information available, and access to ordering certificates.