Launchy is da Bomb!

Just finished reformatting my harddrive, and installed Windows 2003 Server+SP1 as my OS. Primarily to take advantage of Win2K3's superior memory management and security, not to mention stability compared to WinXp+SP2. I have been salivating with the newer tech(NET 3.0, Virtual Server 2005 R2, etc.) and although I have been toying with these in my virtual machine, I felt constrained by the VM itself, so I've decided to use OS w/c supports it natively hence the reasons above.

I have made an application checklist that were present in my previous setup, and decided to install one a time. I have heard of Launchy before, but I've been using SlickRun for some time now, you've seen one program launcher you've seen em all, I said. Out of curiosity though, I decided to install Launchy which already reached 1.0 milestone, and boy was I glad I did. Instead of configuring applications to have a magic word like SlickRun, it uses all the items in your Start menu as a lookup. It's like a searchable Startmenu ala Vista, but more prettier. It's default look-up directory is the Start Menu directory, and indexes all shortcut files(.lnk) for faster searching, you can configure also to add several lookup directories and include exe files or whatever files for lookup.

The only minor(minute) gripe is that I couldn't create a mnemonic for the application ala magic word in SlickRun. So instead of "vs.net" I'd have to type "Visual Studio 2005" to get to the application, maybe it can be done in the future. The default launch key of Launchy is ALT+SPACE, which is basically the same as the system menu, so I changed it to WIN + Q in memory of SlickRun :)
Published 01-30-2007 11:52 AM by bonskijr
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Comments

# re: Launchy is da Bomb!

hmm, i also plan to try out launchy but the mnemonic is the real killer why i use slickrun, i guess i'll stick to it (with its weird delphi library)

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 5:45 AM by jokiz

# re: Launchy is da Bomb!

Yup, however as I discovered Launchy it seems is like an intelligent trained hound. To keep it from searching in the index all the time, it caches(permanently I guess) whatever you typed when launching an app. For example running VS2005,  I type vs2 and select it from the list, the next time you're going to launch vs2005, just type the same 3 letters and it will give you that same app.

cool!

ps: one handy feature is the built-in calculator, as I oftentimes use the wincalc; and also you can google in the launcher itself.. way cool!!

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:35 PM by bonskijr