Many of you know that I've been a longtime fan of Windows Desktop Search. Besides being a solid desktop search application, WDS also has this extremely useful concept of aliases. You can read more about this in the "Aliases and Application Launching" section of my review (which I haven't updated for a while, by the way). Unfortunately, WDS still refuses to install on my desktop which runs XP x64.

I finally got tired of the eternal wait. I needed my aliases, so I turned to an alternative - SlickRun. And slick it certainly is. This tiny app (a mere 170KB download!) allows me to create aliases to do pretty much exactly what I was using aliases for in WDS, and it's extremely customizable. It even does auto-completion of aliases - something that WDS didn't do. If you're new to the world of aliases, the site offers a bunch of "MagicWord Packs" to get you started.

Fellow keyboard-addicts rejoice! No need to dig through the Start menu anymore, and no need to scatter icons all over the desktop and taskbar. If you want a really quick way to launch your apps and search the web, but don't want to (or can't) install WDS, check this out.