Quicksilver
I take a minimalist approach to using third-party utilities for computers, for a few reasons. First, over the years I’ve found many of them to not be very reliable, leading to crashes or data corruption. Second, if the author didn’t follow the rules (and sometimes even if they did), things break when the OS is upgraded. So rather than contend with crashes and other problems, I’m very picky about what gets installed.
Yesterday I was browsing this site and found this recommendation about a utility I wasn’t familiar with:
Quicksilver allows you to find what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application’s name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it.
I downloaded and installed, and am happy to say that Quicksilver appears to be well-designed and useful. I’ll give it a few weeks before making a final decision, but for now, I’m encouraged.