Scott Hanselman just recently posted an entry about application launchers. In the entry, he covered the two that I use every day – Launchy and Slickrun. They work well together, each filling in where the other lacks. I use Launchy to start applications and index local directories and files (you can tell it what directories and type of files you want it to index and let it go on its merry way). Slickrun is much more powerful, but also takes more getting used to. With it, you can browse to shares and create nicknames – or “Magic Words” – and use them to launch applications or URLs.
Both utilities are minimal (Launcher hides until you want to use it and Slickrun is a tiny, unobtrusive box that hovers wherever you place it) and have AutoComplete functionality, which really enhances the overall usability.
In the aforementioned entry, Scott covered several more launcher utilities. I have tried a few of the others (just recently giving up Colibri for Launchy [reason: I wanted more than just an app launcher] and Google Desktop for Slickrun [reason: Google Desktop was too bloated for my tastes]), and will likely try the rest of them out in the near future.
Note: Launchy is open source and Slickrun is freeware, so there’s no reason not to try them!
Listening to Tom Petty – Highway Companion…