In the past I pointed at colibri as the best windows file launcher, but I’ve recently switched over to Launchy after it was mentioned in a sourceforge contest. There’s still nothing on the windows side that’s as elegant as Quicksilver on OSX, but Launchy is getting close. If you’re unfamiliar with this kind of tool, they function thusly – hit a command key sequence to invoke a text entry area, then begin typing the name of the program you want to launch. The tool will begin offering guesses as to which you want to launch, and you can use your arrow keys to pick the appropriate response, then hit enter and off you go. Instead of hitting enter you can hit tab then choose an operation, like, say, ‘reveal location’ or ‘move to.’

It sounds cumbersome but these tools have changed the way I use computers in a significant way. It’s funny – what’s old is new again, since this category of tool is sort of an effort to stick a gui on top of the command line interface we all knew and loved in DOS or in unix.

Anyway check out launchy if you’re on Windows, it’s great.