Eric-- the benefit of an alias/junction/link/shortcut/etc is that it's live; you update one location, and it works everywhere.
A more extreme use of this would be to have a directory on a cloud service (such as Dropbox) in which you have a folder each for your presets, plugins, scripts/scriptUI, and link the Dropbox folders to each of these. That way, all of your extensions are pre-synced on all your computers, and you only need to update one spot to have the same tools available everywhere. Pair this with linking the ModifiedWorkspaces/OriginalUserWorkspaces folders for AE (a bit more hidden and rather clunky/not 100% effective), and even your workspaces would be synced up everywhere.
If anyone's done this more advanced/more adeptly, would love to read a guide (though this is getting fairly OT for this thread).