I’m banging away on my computer all day long, so anything that increases my productivity is welcome. Launchy is one of the best programs in that category and I probably use it hundreds of times a day.

Basically, Launchy is a quick program launcher. For instance, if I wanted to open up a new Excel window quickly I would:

1. Hit control-space to open up the Launchy window
2. Start typing what I am after and Launchy would guess what it is. In my case ‘ex’ is enough (Launchy learns your favorites)
3. Hit enter and up comes Excel

That’s 4 keys to open Excel!

Launchy indexes all of the shortcuts in your start menu and on the Desktop. No more scratching through the start menu looking for a shortcut.

You can do all sorts of other clever things with Launchy. Get it to index text files or commonly used Excel files. Index your bookmarks folder for each access to your favorite sites. Make a shortcut to shut down your computer.

It’s one of those programs that just works. It does what you want, it’s quick, it looks good – you will never look back.