If you’re like me, you find the Windows XP Start Menu clunky and slow to deal with. Not only do you switch from keyboard to mouse, but you’re also browsing a listing that can be in any order if you don’t have your Start Menu alphabetically sorted.
This is one of the biggest improvements in Vista, in my opinion.
With Vista, you enter the Start Menu (Hit the Windows key or click on the circular Start button) and just start typing what you’re looking for and it pulls up matches as you type. I’m looking for Microsoft Word, so I type ‘Word’ and Microsoft Word 2003 and Wordpad both show up. It filters down the list immensely.
You can emulate this somewhat in Windows with the help of a few keyboard shortcuts.
If you go to the Start, Run (or press Windows Key + R) and enter the following to launch each program.
Firefox: firefox.exe
Thunderbird: thunderbird.exe
Paint: paint.exe
Calculator: calc.exe
Command Prompt: cmd.exe
Services Manager: services.msc
…
You can also expand the functionality of this with any of the many free Hotkey programs out there like the simple Shortcuts Map or the more fully featured Hotkeycontrol. Simply associate a keyboard shortcut with a program executable and you’re good to go. You could then launch any program that you’ve configured with just keyboard shortcuts. You just have to remember what those commands are.