Very interesting post. I’ve been moving towards a minimalist desktop for some time and use Fences to contain my shortcuts but I’ve never thought of aligning them, or my open apps/windows, to a grid – I must admit it really does make a difference as does auto-hiding the Windows task bar.

I prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse and have tried loads of different launchers – KeyBreeze, FARR etc and Launchy was my app of choice until I discovered Executor (http://executor.dk/) after reading a review over on Lifehacker (http://uk.lifehacker.com/400566/executor-is-impressive-full+featured-app-launcher) having used it ever since. It’s a very powerful tool and amongst other things you can set up keywords to navigate to specific directory paths. If you’re not getting on with Launchy I suggest you give it a try.