Best Free Program Launcher

Hm. Take a dock, add an applet to make some part of it a bit more functional, then take the dock away and you have Standalone Stack, if I read the page correctly!

Cute -- but as you say, not a true launcher. I suspect also that although it's a single, standalone executable, it probably doesn't work with relative paths, which is sort of a necessity for portability.

I'm inclined to take a closer look, just to satisfy my curiosity, but I'm not sure it'll move into the above list, for the reasons you state.

Launchy does seem to leak memory under some system configurations, and I haven't seen any suggestion that the issue's been fixed.

Whether FARR will serve you better is very dependent on your needs and expectations, I'd have said. My personal choice is FARR, but this whole category is at least as much about personal preferences as functionality. Your milage probably WILL vary, in other words!

FARR, like Launchy, remembers what you did and ensures your most frequent choices are closer to the top of any list. It doesn't need any seriuous configuration to work straight out of the box, but if you want to tweak it to better suit your needs, there's plenty of options under the hood (and an active forum where you can find even more ways to extend it.)

It doesn't always feel as responsive as Launchy, but I've had an instance running continually on a netbook that's rarely rebooted and I've not observed any issues caused by it running in the background pretty much continually.

The only other possibility I'm aware of that you might wish to try is Executor (mentioned below, http://executor.dk/) which I'm still evaluating but has a lot in common with both Launchy and FARR. (And if you DO try it, I'd be interested to hear of your experiences with it!)

Hm. At first glance, looks a lot like SlickRun. But its feature list is extensive (almost intimidatingly so!) and it deserves a more detailed look than just reading the webpage... Thanks for the find!

Interesting idea! A bit too technophile oriented, perhaps, but I'm a big fan of AutoHotkey and Everything myself, so I won't criticise!

(Ctrl-space launches Everything, pointed at your start menu and Documents folders, giving a quick way to search within both. Text-oriented, and probably a very fast route to most programs and docs, might need tweaking for different Windows flavours. For that reason, probably only for power users.)

So far, I've only looked at the website -- which itself could have been a better experience since, unless you have java enabled, displays nothing except a feedback link and a wastebin.

The product looks like a combination of concepts: think of a combination of icon dock and keyword search, and throw in bolt-on functionality for weather forecasting, task management and various other things. A bit like, now I think of it, reinventing the sidebar and various widgets for it.

This really does look like an "everything including the kitchen sink" solution, but because of its nature I'm going to have to be quite careful about making sure it doesn't interfere too much with my system before I try it out.

My initial advice is: try with care. It appears to be freeware but insists that it phones home for updates it will install without asking your permission before doing, and that worries me a bit. I will investigate further and post any more findings (and, if appropriate, a detailed review) here when I have.

I've been wondering whether I should include programs like this, but it's primarily intended for portable use and probably therefore belongs in the Best Free Portable Applications list.

For what it's worth, my favourite portable program launcher is Pstart, already listed on http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-portable-programs.htm

This is a really nice find -- thanks!

I've been using this for a few days and, despite an impression that maybe there's a slight performance hit, it's a strong choice in this area. It's a bit of a hybrid of two of the existing Top Picks -- a RocketDock feel with some Migic Formation style, it seems to be very easy to use, quick to pick up, customisable without being complicated...

So far, I've only tried the portable version under Win 7. This omits (for obvious reasons) the ability to start automatically with Windows but otherwise appears completely functional. A proper review will follow once I've pushed it a bit harder to see how it stands up, but my initial impression is that this is a very worthy addition to this list.

Looks like a right-click Swiss-Army-Knife tool. Also looks well worth a look, and like that "look" might well need to be extensive. Hm...

Anyway, it lives at http://apathysoftworks.com/software/qc

and seems to have been mentioned with glowing reviews in a variety of places -- although my (very) early impression is that it's more a power-user clipboard tool than otherwise. We shall see -- and thanks for the (albeit very abbreviated) pointer!

[later]

Neat product. But I can't see that it belongs in this category. If it can be a launcher, I can't see that it's a primary intent of the program and, if I can't work it out in a few minutes, I'm definitely disinclined to spend much longer with it.

I may take a look at this, but I'm concerned that the publisher's own website doesn't even mention the product, let alone provide a download link. For the time being, I'm not going to shift from my main recommendation in this category of RocketDock (with a sideswipe to the effect that if you want multiple docks and are prepared to spend a little time getting to grips with the configuration, then LaunchBar Commander (a sister program to another of my recommendations, FARR) is worth a look. More details here:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/LaunchBarCommander/index.html

I've commented on this application already -- see my post below, in response to another user.

As far as portable launchers are concerned, I use two: FARR (which, because of its ability to search the environment in which it finds itself without having to build indexes is a good alternative to searching in a Start menu you're not familiar with) and PStart, which is a good way to build a cascading, organised menu to the portable apps on your thumbdrive.