CircleDock automatically puts files, folders, and shortcuts within a few pixels of your mouse when you invoke it for quick action. The app is portable, so you can toss it on your thumb drive and take it with you. CircleDock is free and open source, requires . NET 3.5. If you give it a try, let's hear what you think in the comments.
Executor is an application launcher. Executor's emphasis on keywords. Although it does text search for just about anything, Executor gives priority to user-assigned keywords for launching apps, documents, and folders. What's more, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any keyword for quick launches without even invoking Executor. Keyword functionality aside, Executor is also very fast and lightweight, eating just over 10MB of RAM in Task Manager. But that's not all that makes it great
Microsoft Desktops Gives Windows Super-Simple Multiple Desktops
Desktops, a new Vista-compatible 1.0 release from Microsoft's Sysinternals team, is a multi-desktop tool for Windows users who don't want, or can't afford the system resources for, a complete virtual desktop solution, such as VirtuaWin. Desktops simply asks you to assign universal shortcut keys for desktop switching between a maximum of four (Shift+Ctrl+F1, for example), and then nests in your system tray to offer thumbnail views and switching by clicking. One plus is that Desktops doesn't load new memory-hogging desktops until you create them. The big downsides are an inability to drag apps between desktops, along with incompatibility with some tools (Firefox, Launchy, and anything that doesn't like multiple instances, for that matter). So it's mostly a simple means of keeping full-screen email, browsers, office apps, and other programs separated, but it does that pretty well--with improvements, hopefully, to come. Desktops is a free download for Windows systems only.
Startup Delayer Staggers Your Startup Apps for Smoother Loading
The common startup bottleneck caused by all of your startup applications fighting to run at the same time. You'd never try launching eight different applications at the same time under normal circumstances and expect your computer to handle it well, so why should your startup apps be any different? To use it, just drag applications to the delay bar at the bottom of the window. You can visualize the time between the launch of different apps and drag-and-drop the delays until you've got the perfect spacing.
