Ctrl+Alt+Launch
One of the most useful little utilities I have found. Ctrl+Alt+Launch (or Cal as it is usually referred to) is a shortcut utility that allows you to quickly launch programs on your computer. Here’s how it works:
- Click Ctrl+Alt (or designate your own shortcut key combo) and a small prompt box will come up.
- Start typing in the name of the shortcut you created, any program in your start menu, a web address, or a path on your file system and let the autocomplete do it’s job. You can even search the web!
That’s it! No more browsing through folders, no more digging through the start menu, it’s all done for you. Even if you don’t setup shortcuts this little utility is useful.
Did I say little? I meant it. Despite the program doing some background indexing, it rarely ties up processing cycles, and only uses 3MB of RAM on my computer.
For such a small program it is amazingly configurable. You can get to the configuration through the taskbar icon and setup many options from running on startup, turning features on and off, and even configuring 3 different web searches!
All that made a useful program for me with very little work, but what about the shortcuts? Shortcuts allow you to setup an alias for a program to launch it. Of course, there are times that you want to launch more than one program at a time. For this you can setup a keyword on each of these shortcuts to launch it. My favorite is one called “startup” that simply opens my e-mail and all the apps I generally want to check shortly after sitting down to the computer.
Ctrl+Alt+Launch is a powerful and easy-to-use utility that once you start using you will be hooked. Best of all, it’s free!
I use this application as well, the application becomes an addiction. After a few days of first install, you get the hang of the apps feature set of launch actions. Weeks go by, and to your amazement of how much you really use this app. When I proceed to use a computer without this little program I found myself trying to open up the launch box with my custom key combination, only to be disappointed of the fact it isn’t there. So I encourage EVERYONE to use this app so I don’t get disappointed when I need to use your computer, thanks.
Comment by Daniel Story | February 9, 2008
Thanks for the blog and sharing how much you guys like my application.
More than 1 1/2 year ago I was sitting at my computer wondering what would be the best application to increase productivity on your computer. After being in the IT field for some years I got accustomed to using the ‘Run…’ to get places on my computer. I noticed that the Run dialog was just not full-filling my needs. I then decided to code something myself, after a few pre-release versions and tweaking the UI this is what you got. I always kept in mind that for whatever feature I was going to add that I would want it configurable so it would not limit the possibilities of the application to a user.
But I have to agree with you on the addiction, I know I can be a bit biased but I too am addicted to it.
Stayed tuned for some new features coming up that hopefully again you cannotlive without.
Scott
Comment by Scott Nelson | February 9, 2008
I guess that’s what you get with writing replies to blogs on your phone, there isn’t a nice spell checker on it…
Comment by Scott Nelson | February 10, 2008
Seems like a nice little tool. I’ll have to give it a try.
Comment by Wayne Witzel | February 13, 2008