I've recently been using a neat, free application called RunFast that lets me create aliases for launching frequently used programs by typing in the first few letters of their names. Tonight, I was at an interesting meeting on OS X and was impressed with a free application called QuickSilver which goes far beyond this by indexing the hard drive and allowing quick access to files and applications (similar to what Spotlight promises in Tiger, I assume.) In any case, I thought I'd search for an alternative for Windows and came up with QuickStart. It's not as snazzy but it does appear to work really well. I also found a commercial application called AppRocket but couldn't be bothered to install it as it required the latest .Net runtime to be installed first.

The QuickStart article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.