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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Looking for a portable hotkey app? Try QOpen!

QOpen

I'm not generally inclined to make use of program launchers. Instead, I prefer to use the tools that are built in to my Windows OS to save mouseclicks and keystrokes.

QOpen, however, is an interesting alternative for me. It's portable, insanely light on memory usage (about 2mb) and incredibly useful on my service bench.

By default, QOpen is invoked by pressing win + space. Once the window is displayed, entering your preferred abbreviation launches the specified application: NP for Notepad, for example. It also supports drag-and-drop creation of new hotkeys from shortcuts or programs, allows you to specify command line arguments and working path, and can launch applications maximized, minimized, or hidden.

When would this be useful? A lot of the systems I repair on the bench require the same applications, which I store either on a network share or on my USB flash drive. By launching QOpen first, I can execute obnoxiously long commands like "c:\windows\system32\oobe\msoobe /a" (to open the Activation Wizard) by typing something simple like "act" into QOpen.

Its size and low resource utilization is key. I still see the odd Windows XP machine with 128 or 256 megs of memory that needs tuning - some people just love their old beaters and don't want to upgrade or replace them. QOpen is a handy, light way to access apps like CCleaner, HijackThis, and Adaware from my file server and it doesn't bog down older machines like Launchy does.

Filed under: Features, Linux, Open Source, How-Tos

Flipping the Linux switch: Cairo-Dock is pain free eye candy

Cairo panel, really freakin' smallIt's a weird phenomenon. Nearly every computer platform steals another one's look. Vista gets accused of trying to look too much like OS X. Linux desktops get accused of trying to look like Vista (except when they're accused of ripping off OS X).

Well, okay, we guess really what that proves is that there's at least something distinctive and cutting edge about OS X's look. Love it or hate it, everyone seems to think everyone else is ultimately copying it.

There's no denying, the first time we saw OS X, our hearts beat a little faster when we saw the dock.

Until now, though, the dock concept was really sort of a nuisance to get working effectively in Linux. There is the Avant Window Navigator, and though it does the trick quite nicely, many newbies (or extremely busy people) said the tweaking factor left them wanting something a little less involved.

We've been using Cairo-Dock of late, and we really like it. The beauty of it extends far beyond the physical appearance. There are source packages, and there are Debian binary packages. Installing isn't that difficult. We even installed it, quickly and with great success, on a 64 bit system (and yes, we'll show you how.)

Read more →

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Ask DLS

What's your favorite program launcher? Ask DLS

launchers
OS X has its dock, Windows Vista has an enhanced start menu, and Windows XP has, well, a bunch of menus to click through to launch programs. But thanks to independent developers, there are a ton of great program launchers out there that make it easy to bring an OS X-style dock to Windows, or keyboard program launchers to pretty much any operating system.

Over the years we've tried out a ton of program launchers, but we're not sure we've settled on a favorite. The sidebar launchers for Vista and Yahoo! Widget Engine are kind of nice. RocketDock is amazing if you have a handful or applications you use all the time. And keyboard launcher Launchy is all kinds of awesome, if you can remember the name of the program your looking for.

But we haven't yet found one launcher to rule them all. So we turn to you, our loyal Download Squad readers. What's your favorite application launcher, and why? Oh yeah, and don't forget to let us know what operating systems it works with. While Launchy and RocketDock are both Windows-only, we don't want to leave out applications like Google Desktop that are cross-platform.

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