(Note: this is not a paid review in any way; I just like this program a lot.)
Just want to highlight a piece of software I use religiously. Colibri is a small bit of software that indexes all applications in your “Programs” folder (Start > All Programs) and then lets you open them by typing the application name. Via a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Space by default) a small window opens; you start typing the name of the program you want, Colibri starts showing you a list matching what you’ve typed.
For example, I launch Adobe Photoshop CS2 by typing “Ph”; Colibri shows “Adobe Photoshop CS2″ as the most likely match, and other possible matches in a smaller list. After I choose “Adobe Photoshop CS2″ as the program I wanted to launch, Colibri records this, and will remember in the future that when I type “Ph”, I probably mean “Adobe Photoshop CS2″.
You can also open websites in the browser of your choice from Colbri. For example, I can hit Ctrl + Space to open Colibri (opens instantly, no load time), type “Firefox” (or however many letters I need to for Colibri to decide “Mozilla Firefox” is most likely the program I’m looking for), and then hit “Tab” to open a “Launch” window. I can then type whatever website address I want, and when Firefox opens, it will go to that website. Neat.
Colibri has some other features, like a portable mode that saves your program index on a removeable USB drive, integrated speaker Volume control, Google search, but to be honest I don’t use those. It’s enough for me to have near instant keyboard access to my programs. I install this on any computer I use regularly, and love it.
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