Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware
Microsoft finally gets into the keyboard app launcher biz with Speed Launch
by Brad Linder Aug 19th 2008 at 5:00PM
Speed Launch adds a little bull's eyee to your desktop. To add a frequently used program, file, or document, to Speed Launch, just drag it to the target. You can then activate Speed Launch by hitting Win+C to bring up the program window. You can either hit the buttons to perform specified actions or type into the box. In other words, it does pretty much what you'd expect any keyboard launcher to do.
But Speed Launch has a few quirks. First, the program doesn't lose focus or go away unless you hit the X button in the upper right. Second, there doesn't seem to be a way to change the hotkeys that bring up the Speed Launch window. So if, like me, you happen to have a computer with an awkwardly-placed Windows key, there's no way to change the hotkeys.
The program is also a bit of a memory hog, using as much as 30MB of RAM, which is far more than similar programs like Launchy or Executor use. That seems strange, especially considering the fact that Speed Launch doesn't index your program files or start menu items automatically, something which both of those other programs do.
Overall, Speed Launch doesn't stack up particularly well against the competition. But it's worth keeping in mind that this is an experimental project that's still under development.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sockatume said 6:25PM on 8-19-2008
There's already a quick launcher-ish function built into Vista. Items in the quicklaunch toolbar can be activated with win+, where is its position, i.e. win+1 minimises, win+2 does flip3D, win+3 launches notepad on my machine. It doesn't function if you hide the quicklaunch bar, but it does work if the quicklaunch is shrunk such that only one icon is visible.
For anything which isn't in Quicklaunch, win followed by the first few letters of the application name is usually enough to grab it from Programs.
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James said 6:26PM on 8-19-2008
Yeah, Vista has this pretty much wrapped up, IMHO. Now, I haven't used the other launchers, and what I've read of Quicksilver seems to indicate that it's got a bit more meat to it than what's being described, but if all you want is an easy way to launch selected apps, WIN+# seems like a winner to me.
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Fran said 1:20AM on 8-20-2008
The one thing which win+ doesn't do is open particular folders. Speed Launch does a very good job with this. Are there other ways of quickly opening folders which may be deep in a hierarchy?
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Jash Sayani said 7:13AM on 8-20-2008
Nice. Finally M$ realized it. However, its not as good as Quicksilver on my Mac. It should fade out on hitting Esc. And the hot keys should be modifiable by the user. Hope to see it in the next release...
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Mark said 8:21AM on 8-20-2008
1) As other people have said, Microsoft has it wrapped up with Windows Vista.
2) Another anti-MS comment brought to you by the DownloadSquad, or more particularly Brad (and I guessed this before looking at the author by the tone of the article).
3) Quality control. For the love of god.
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rushangshah said 12:36PM on 8-20-2008
Been using Direct Access for 3 years now. You'll thank me later (trust me):
http://www.nagarsoft.com/
-M
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Aaron said 1:34PM on 8-20-2008
Why isn't Microsoft concentrating on it's core feature...THE OS?! Am I the only one who's tired of seeing MS put focus and into software that is already out there? I've been using Launchy for a while now even though I'm running Vista.
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Dave Tigweld said 12:36PM on 8-20-2008
Yes, you are the only one. Nine women do not make a baby in one month.
LordDaMan said 4:31PM on 8-20-2008
They are focusing on the OS. This is soemthing done by the office team, hence the website being called microsoft office labs :D
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