At home I use Vista. At work I use mostly XP. There is really only one feature I miss from Vista when I’m at work.
Search in the start menu. I can’t stand XP’s menus on the start button. I’ve got at least 4 machines, each with different ways of categorizing things in the start menu. They all are way too cluttered to spot anything, and I loathe every time I have to go these menus. With Vista, all you do is search. Type “e”, and you are already at Excel. Type “programs” and you’re in the control panel. It’s just great.
I realize you can buy add-on products to XP to do this. Maybe I will. This is the most visible feature that I miss from Vista.
Why not just install Enso (it’s free)? Even works in Vista, so you can do the same thing whichever OS you use. (http://www.humanized.com/enso/launcher/)
Take a look at Launchy!
http://www.launchy.net
I use Google Desktop for this, it works well for finding programs in the start menu.
Roman is right, definitely try Launchy. I would not want to go without it!
Another vote for Launchy
Find and Run Robot (FARR) or Launchy, bot are good for quick launches, but the plugin and customization model is good in Find and Run Robot, while Launchy is simple to try out. I started off with launchy and moved to Find and Run Robot.
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