I'll be honest, here; the only reason I still have a dock bar on my desktop at this point is that I think it's pretty. I could easily run my computer without one and be even more efficient, and there's one reason why.
The Keyboard Application Launcher.
The basic principle of this class of software is as follows: you hit a quick hotkey combination to bring up the launcher, start typing the name of the program you want, and voila; hit enter, and you've got your program in a few keystrokes.
Now, there are a few good choices in this field, but my personal favorite is Launchy. There are a few other decent choices, but I haven't tried all of them; Colibri was fairly good, when last I tried it, but Launchy has a few nice things going for it. It's easy to configure, it handles spelling mistakes pretty well. Enzo is also fairly decent, but then again it's also mostly dead - AND, counting further against it, it's not skinable.
Launchy, on the other hand, is. Very skinable, in fact. There are quite a lot of good skins available on DeviantArt, as is often the case with programs I'll mention, and it comes with a few good ones preloaded, too. Odds are you can find something you like that goes with whatever look you've got going for your desktop.
Another program that sometimes is mentioned is FindAndRunRobot, but I don't know much about its features or skinability. Mostly the screenshots I've seen just don't look terribly pretty, but I'm willing to be proven wrong if anyone can show otherwise.
Oh, but before I leave Launchy behind and finish this entry: Perhaps my favorite feature of Launchy is its ability to index files other than your Start Menu/Quick Launch. Launchy can also be configured to index your videos, photos, documents, music. . . whatever you might wish. I have mine set to index Videos, Music, and Documents, in all the places I commonly store them.
Download it, mess around, you'll figure it out; after all, it's freeware, safe, and light on resource consumption. You've got nothing to lose by trying it. :)
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