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Windows has a bevy of great app launchers available, but when it comes to simplicity and customization, Launchy is our favorite. Launch programs and perform actions with just a few keystrokes Open documents, files, and folders Navigate to and/or search through web sites Build your own commands to perform nearly any action you want View recent applications and documents launched with Launchy Third-party plugins provide tons of other functionality, from calculations to web searches to task management Launchy is powerful, while remaining very simple to use.
The Best Application Launcher for Windows
We are pleased to release our Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware TweakUI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows 7 & Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit. This Tweaker was first released at the Microsoft South Asia MVP Meet 2008.
Ultimate Windows Tweaker, a TweakUI for Windows 7 & Vista
Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer's Boot Time
If there's one thing everyone dreads, it's rebooting their computer. It may only take a minute or two, but it can seem like forever. Here are our top 10 tweaks that'll make your computer boot a little faster. Photo by Alex Schwenke .
How Can I Diagnose and Fix My Slow Computer?
Dear Lifehacker, My computer's feeling a little sluggish lately and I want to boost its performance if possible. I see ads all the time for PC optimization programs, but they all look spammy. Are there any easy and reliable tools I can use to check my PC and tune it up? Thanks, Hoping for a Boost Title image by Jake Sumpter , utilizing a photo by Aaron Amat (Shutterstock) . Dear Hoping, Getting top performance out of your computer is definitely a Lifehacker challenge.
If you use Google's Public DNS server or OpenDNS as your DNS server, you may notice starting today that YouTube videos load faster and other web content comes in quicker. If you're using your ISP's DNS server as the default, now's a good time to try Google's or OpenDNS. The reason behind the speed bump is that OpenDNS and Google are working with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to attach location data to the DNS requests, so when you request a web page, it will go to a server near you rather than, as previously mentioned possibly a server that's not closest to you.
How to Enjoy the New Web Speed Boost from Google DNS and OpenDNS
Dear Lifehacker, Everyone bickers about which browser is faster, but in my experience all of them eventually slow down after I've opened a few tabs and used them for a while. Whether I use Chrome, Firefox, or IE, my CPU spikes, the browser eats my memory, and it slows to a crawl. How can I stop this? Please Help, Need for Speed Photo by William Warby . Dear Need for Speed, That's the trouble with browsers these days-everyone argues over a few seconds of startup and rendering time, but eventually everyone winds up complaining about how slow they get with regular use.
How Do I Stop My Browser from Slowing to a Crawl?