Hands on: First look at Speed Launch

It’s always nice to try out a new freebie from Microsoft, and this month I looked at the pre-release version of Speed Launch, which works under Vista, XP SP2 and XP SP3. You’ll need to have Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0 installed ­ – there’s a link provided to the free download –­ and you’ll also need to agree to participate in the Office Labs Usage Metrics and Auto Update. The details of this are fully explained in the End-user License Agreement, which for once is worth a read.

Having jumped through all these hoops, what you get is a small target above the System Tray, but you can move it elsewhere. It’s always on top, but fades when not in use, so isn’t obtrusive. Double-click on it (or press Windows key & C) and you’ll get a rather unprepossessing window containing link buttons to various search engines and a weather report. Of the former, Megasearch is rather useful as it asks for the search string then opens tabs for Google, Live Search and Yahoo in your browser.

However, there’s a bit more to it than that. The five buttons are just those most recently used, and the real appeal is for keyboard fans. Drag a shortcut from your Start Menu, Desktop, Quick Launch bar or anywhere else on to the target. You can also drag URLs from a browser address bar (hint ­ – drag the icon to the left of the address).

You’ll be prompted to give it a name. So think of something short and to the point –­ for example, I created a shortcut to ‘My Pictures’ folder and gave it the name ‘Pix’. Having created a few shortcuts, open Speed Launch and start typing. It’s predictive, so even if your shortcut name isn’t that short, a few letters should find it.

Where it gets really clever is in the use of functions. Search for anything that springs to mind on this website, for instance ‘handlebar’. In the results page, drag the address on to the Speed Launch target. You’ll be prompted for a shortcut name ­ – end this with a full-stop. Click ‘Add’ and you’ll get a further screen.

In the top box type a prompt for the type of information expected for the function –­ this can be anything you want. In the bottom box highlight your original search string ­ ‘handlebar’ in my case. Click the Finish button. That creates the shortcut.

Let’s say you want to search our site for references to Ubuntu. Open the Speed Launch Window, and type PCW. A second prompt will appear asking for a term to launch the shortcut, so type Ubuntu or whatever you want to find. You can skip the second prompt by typing PCW.ubuntu at the first prompt.

For me, however, the killer feature is that one shortcut can launch more than one thing and these can be of disparate types. For example, say you are engaged in a project that involves opening three documents, a spreadsheet, two folders, a couple of websites and a game of Solitaire for when it all gets too much.