>Except that Microsoft didn't take away. They added. They improved. I'll say it again... typing the name of your program is much easier and faster than searching through a hierarchical menu.

...which I'm doing for years now, using Launchy. However, it doesn't requre an indexing service for it, it scans the folders I tell it to scan, for extensions I specify. And it has the most intelligent MRU list I've seen so far. The stuff I use most frequently requires just one character.