I just finished reading PC Worlds 101 Fantastic Freebies and listed are some great free software. In the list is a fantastic tool called Launchy.  Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes. It can also be configured to launch programs and documents from directories. To start all you need to do is type the keys Alt+Space. This will launch the application.

Just type the program you want to run and Launchy will display matches as you type. In this example I typed exp and Launchy displayed programs that match *exp*. Just scroll to the desired program and press enter. I even typed 2008 and it listed Visual Studio 2008 as one of the programs. How cool is that!

By default Launchy will index programs and documents from your start menu but you can easily include directories. Clicking the star at the top right corner causes the Launchy Options to appear.

In the above the C:\Program Files directory and the EXE file extension is included in the indexing.

What a great tool to include in your toolbox!

Guess the movie

Just how dangerous is he? ... Compared to what? The bubonic plague?