A few tips for Spotlight that made me stop using apps like Quicksilver and Alfred:

1. Typing something and pressing CMD+B will open a browser and do a Google search for that

2. Typing math works now

3. You can change your Spotlight preferences to not include files you don't wanna search on, essentially always showing apps (if you just want it do be an app launcher)

Alfred does a lot more than this, but for me these were the key automation features I needed to stop using it.