Best shortcut management tool for development machine?

Question

As a developer I had a slew of shortcuts and applications used daily. Visual Studio 6, 2003, 2005, 2008, SQL Client tools, WinMerge, Notepad++, Synergy, VMware (and lots and lots of VMs, multiple browsers, and on top of all that about 20 shortcuts to important directories, servers, test environments etc...

The Vista start menu is a lifesaver for getting to many of them quickly. However there are plenty of daily tasks that still require a relatively large amount of work to access (open a folder, jump through a few sub-folders, find a specific file and fire it off.

What tools/applications/utilities do you find to be the most beneficial to providing organized and fast access to all of your most frequently visited tools?

What are some tools that can be embedded on the task bar of Windows that provide similar functionality to drawers in Linux or stacks in OS X? My current quick-launch bar (and other folders added to the task bar) eat up tons of real estate and insist on opening new explorer windows to display sub-directories, which suffices but is still slow and polutes my desktop.

...can't wait for tomorrow to get the Win 7 RC and its finally improved task bar

Answer 1

Check out Fences from Stardock. It's very clever, and lets you keep your desktop clean and organized, even with lots of shortcuts. Oh, and it's free.

Answer 2

Launchy. I first heard about it from Scott Hanselman.

Answer 3

Quicksilver style launchers are quite common to accomplish this task. You press a keyboard shortcut or click on an icon in the tray, that pops up a window where you can search for your programs, documents, shortcuts, bookmarks, etc.

Check out Launchy, its simple, clean and free.

Answer 4

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I'm a big fan of SlickRun. It's basically a command launcher tool, but it's how I launch almost everything.

Answer 5

I'm pretty fond of SlickRun

Answer 6

I think Virtual Desktop Manager is a good solution if you are using XP. I dont know there is a simillar microsoft product for windows Vista or not.. :(

Answer 7

I love Humanized Enso.

Their product is free now, although it is no longer developed by the original authors.

There is also a Google Code project that builds on a Enso prototype, which allows you to easily extend it using Python.

Short summary:

• Allows you to teach shortcuts to the program
• Has nice features like:
  • Integrated translation...
  • Integrated Google Maps...
  • Integrated dictionary
  • Integrated Google search
  • etc...
• Developed by the same people that are now working on Mozilla Ubiquity

Answer 8

I use HotKeyboard