Launchy: Great flashy launcher

I generally don’t use launchers since I don’t like to slow my startup process with them. However, Launchy virtually starts in no time, and only uses ~500k of resources, and also it looks very cool, so I can’t resist in keeping it.

Launchy is a launcher that helps you open files, programs, etc. without needing to browse the start menu or any other folders. I install a lot of programs to test before writing about them on Freeware Elite, so my start menu is always clogged.

Launchy indexes the start menu and any other folders you want in realtime, so the search is always extremely quick. You just type in a few letters and a few choices appear. The number of choices in the menu shown depends on the settings.

You open the program by pressing a hotkey, Alt-Space by default (you can change this), and start typing to search. What’s great is that it can also do simple calculations quickly (+,-,*,/) by typing them in the search box.

Verdict: Great launcher because of the aesthetically pleasing interface and also the highly customizable settings. Only con is that there is no portable version (what did you expect? It runs on startup!:))

Version Tested: 2.1.2

Compatibility: Win 98 or above.

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchy/files/Launchy%20for%20Windows/#