I was seeking for a utility that can imitate the Windows Vista search functionality that is embedded in “Start Menu” and I came across a wonderful and light program that is called Launchy.

It keeps hidded until it’s needed. Alt-Spacebar is the default key combination to bring it up but can be changed if it conflicts with something else. Launchy can index just the “Start Menu” or all the files on your disk (or the file types you specify). You bring it up, start typing and will tell you what will find, highlight what you want and press Enter. That’s it! If you want to supply command line parameters, press TAB before ENTER and type the parameters.

It can be told to re-index automatically every X minutes but I have disabled that as I use it only for Start Menu and re-indexing is two clicks away anyway! It has it’s own plug-in system to extend functionality but unil now, I haven’t find something interesting. It also has different skins to choose to.

Go get it now, it’s open-source and completely free!

http://www.launchy.net/