I thought I’d waffle on about what apps and utils that I find useful. It’ll be in no particular order, just what springs to mind. So for my first useful util I’ve chosen is something I use everyday, almost all the time.
Its SlickRun from Bayden Systems. Essentially its a floating command line that allows you to set up aliases (magic words as it calls them) to various actions. For me its meant I can get rid of all my short cuts and icon clutter. All I need to do now is press “Windows Key + Q” to open the prompt and then start typing the magic word I’m after, as you can see below:
It might not be the most sexy looking of programs but it sure is functional. The amount of time this program has saved me is immeasurable. Instead of playing hunt the icon on a toolbar I can quickly run pretty much anything in seconds.
It doesn’t just run programs though, you can also type in paths and file names and it’ll open them. It also has a little maths parser built in. If you type “=” first and then your calculation, as you would in Calc, then hit enter, you’ll get a result. Obviously for something like this it has auto-complete for that little speed bump in usage. Oh and its free too!
I found it purely by accident from a 10 utilities in 10 minutes video that Scott Hanselman did last year. Expect more utils from that video!
Amusingly, someone I converted to SlickRun says he’s sure programs load faster with it! I wonder if there’s any truth in that?
