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Do you miss your desktop?

Alsalam alikom wa ra7mat Allah wa barakatoh

Windows Vista Beta 2 (2)
Image by MaXiAoLiNg™ via Flickr

Do you have a desktop like this?
I bet you do… Today, I was restarting my pc (since like a month ago) and realized I have never really used my desktop !!.. I have never hit Win+D (to hide all open windows) and click an icon on my desktop..
What I do usually is hit Win+R, open what I want (i.e process, path, the desktop folder itself)
I’m not quite sure whether this is only me or not but this is what I see when I wander around in our office… everybody has something open, nobody is looking at their desktop !
What desktops are there for? a start page to use when you start your pc for the first time? makes no sense.. over time, companies/individuals are producing more and more ways to access everything without the need to go back to your desktop (i.e Google Desktop, MS Desktop Search, AutoHotKey… etc) they are all trying to put all your information at your hands..
For me, I even don’t use Vista’s –so cold so good application launcher- that shows up when you hit the win key.. why? because my machine is usually loaded with dozens of open software/windows, so hitting Win key and waiting for 2-3 seconds till it open then type something looks like a lot to me! I would say launching an application should not take more than 2 seconds. In vista/google desktop when your pc is loaded, it may take 4-5 secs..
A solution? I don’t have a direct one.. but for instance, I liked the Mozilla’s AURORA that small external LCD where you can see the latest information… what if it is clickable/touch-aware and what if this is integrated into your keyboard, so that you can put short cuts for most used applications?.
I just want to start an application when I want to, not when my machine allows me to… Am I asking for something hard !
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Comments

  1. Try Launchy .. It's fine, at least better than Vists/GoogleDesktop .. not as fast as Run, but got more stuff .. and plugins too ..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did, it's faster than GDesktop when it comes to displaying the search box. I found that I don't use the shortcuts.. so I ended up using it like run but with suggestions/completion.
    What I like in Run, is that after sometime -specially when you don't restart much- you know what to type to get what you want...

    For example, I type "C:\ when I want to actually run gtalk /mutex -imagine ! .. because I didn't need to put " before C: except when I want to run gtalk /mutex... so I find it the first item in the list...

    Launchy tries to give more weight to the applications you use most... but not to the way you want to call them...
    Maybe if launchy gave attention to such details I will give it another try ;)

    Sorry for the long comment :D you can't imagine how annoying this is !

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aside from the fact that it didnt work with me and gtalk still runs 1 instance .. :)
    In Launchy .. write gtal then hit TAB then write /mutex
    ---
    try Notepa then TAB then x.txt

    ReplyDelete

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