Best App for year 2007!

Launchy is a free open source application launcher for windows. It has won the source forge community choice awards for 'Best New Project' for year 2007. Let's go straight-forward why you need it.

Why Launchy : Because

1. I no longer need to dig deep 10 folders down to locate file/application.

2. I no longer need to search for mp3 file in my music folder or in media library.

3. I need to forget about the start menu, the icons on desktop, and even the file manager.

Launchy automatically loads itself on boot and waits for the user to call it by pressing Alt + Space or a custom user hotkey which activates a search box on your screen. The user then starts typing the name of the program or file they wish to launch. Launchy automatically searches its list of programs for the closest match as the user types. When it finds the desired program, the user hits enter and it is automatically launched.

Windows already has built in support for this type of activation(start->run), but here you have to enter the full name/path of underlying executable. So the ability to launch a program by typing just the fragment of name is definitely useful. This is what Launchy does and Windows desperately lacks.

How it works : Launchy is preset to index your start menu links but can be customized to index any location on your hard drive for any type of file. Launchy has the option to add folders and file formats to its catalog for indexing. You can use it to index your music collection, search firefox keyword bookmarks, navigate file system, and launch apps on the go from portable USB drive. Unlike Google Desktop which indexes everything on your computer and thus hogging the system resources, Launchy is fast, efficient, tiny simple application, way faster than a mouse.

Launchy is very extensible due to its plugin architecture. The following plugins are included with the current release:

1.Controly plugin : To find control panel applications and list them.

2.Weby plugin : Launchy now supports the following search keywords: google,

msn, yahoo, live, weather, amazon, wikipedia, dictionary, thesaurus, imdb, netflix,

and msdn websearch. Type in any of these keywords, hit tab, type in your search query,

and hit enter!

Plus You can add the custom web searches!

3.Calcy plugin : Type in some math ... Launchy will figure out what to do.

The start menu substitute, Launchy reminds that you still have a keyboard.....very effective! Newest version has a genuinely attractive interface. This is highly recommended for any user.

Download link