Hands on: First look at Speed Launch

Drag the first item on to the target, and give it a shortcut name, ‘Project’ for instance, then click Add or press Enter. Drag the second item on to the target and give it the same name.

You’ll be told that the name already exists and asked whether you want to add to the existing shortcut, replace it, or choose a different name. Click ‘Add’ then repeat for all the other shortcuts. Starting ‘Project’ will now launch all the programs, files, folders and so on. Note that you can right-click on the target and ‘Manage Shortcuts…’ to remove items from a multiple launch.

Speed Launch is a little rough around the edges but in its defence it is still pre-release and was created by just two Microsoft employees ­ – in their spare time. It’s well worth a try.

Outlook again
We’re still getting suggestions on working round Outlook’s inability to print a single page or a range of pages from a multi-page message. We’ve already mentioned a low-cost solution in Savvisoft Blueprint, but Keith Winsor suggests an alternative ­ – Greenprint ­ – which is free for home use. At the time of writing, the website claimed to have saved over three million pages, two million pounds of CO2 and 357 trees.

Vista and Command
Next July, MS-Dos will be celebrating its 28th birthday and, although development as a standalone operating system stopped in 2000, it’s still very much alive in the Windows Command Prompt. Since Windows NT there have been two versions, Cmd.exe, the 32-bit version, and Command.com, included for backward compatibility. Vista comes with some new commands, which we’ll be looking at over the next few months.

For now, if you want to, you can give the Command Prompt shortcut the old MS-Dos icon as seen in Windows 3. Right-click on the shortcut, choose Properties, then on the Shortcut Tab, click ‘Change Icon’. Browse to Windows \System32 \Pifmgr.dll and it’s the first icon in the file.

Navigating a folder (or directory, in oldspeak) structure at a Command Prompt takes some nimble fingering and a good memory, which is why I much prefer to do my navigation in Explorer and open the Command Prompt already ‘in’ the chosen folder. In XP and earlier versions of Windows, this is possible by downloading the ‘Open Command Window Here’ Powertoy, which adds itself to the right-click menu for folders. Although Microsoft hasn’t seen fit to release any Vista Powertoys, this feature is built into Vista.