[dwpenn]

This must exist, I just haven't seen it, I know with certainty that I'm not the first person who has wanted it?

When I enter nnnnn (where nnnnn is a five digit article to lookup from one of the issues) I get direct access to the desired item.

Why is it that I have to input the http://find.pcworld.com/ part over and over again for each search, or to mess around trying to salvage the front of the last search string by pasting in a new set of nnnnn integers to make a new search without keyboarding from scratch?
* Sure, we could wait for Microsoft to add a DOSKEY function to the command line of Internet Explorer, or even for.....
* Someone write a customizable or specific to PCWorld shortcut that executes I.E. but stopping in process to collect the nnnnn or some other right-argument for the command line from us before passing the whole string along?
* That interactive shortcut tool could also have a radio button to click that adds "-extoff" to the entry. There's all sorts of possibilities for an interactive client side shortcut.
* Back to the host-side, it seems to me this could be solved as a form web page with one input field. Why is there apparently nothing to do this, or if there is something, why is it not widely known and given a lot of visibility ?
When I enter http://find.pcworld.com/* I am taken to http://www.pcworld.com/ (not helpful given what I wanted) and it seems to me someone there could even trap how many people it is that arrive that way at http://www.pcworld.com/ vs. having arrived there directly/deliberately, and then do a number of things with the redirected arrivals, like tally them and assess the need, the ROI, or better yet take them to a list of valid articles or to the form page I'm suggesting be built.
Instead of redirecting why is it that PC World doesn't respond to http://find.pcworld.com/* with a basic form field with one input slot expecting the five integers? It could be that simple, and it could be a lot fancier, for example:
it could be written to make sure you don't enter alpha characters or....
make sure you don't enter an article number that's non-existent, and then give you a chance to rectify without totally re-entering.......
or by playing back a list of articles near that number you entered ± 10 or so each direction, and maybe list the subject of those articles.
getting fancier it could also return a list of article numbers that cover the same topic so that even though you were going for one article you now have it and related choices?
Please please, if you like any of these ideas please do the most basic HTML entry page first, don't make us wait for all the bells and whistles that are helpful or that constitute a parachute for miskeyers. Even a tool without a parachute is better than what we have now.

If someone writes an interactive shortcut for Windows that can do this, please put the spotlight on that tool in PCWorld (the magazine and online), and keep it there, and even offer it to people who are redirected away from http://find.pcworld.com/ because their number was wrong. Better yet, also offer it to people, who with the benefit of cookies you keep, are using FIND a lot.

This is one of those cases where a better mouse trap would be helpful. Thanks, Dean