Say Goodbye to your Start Menu with Guillotine

Long long time ago, I wrote about two software that will allow you to Say Goodbye to your Windows Start Menu. Yet another software that provides a similar functionality is called Guillotine.

Guillotine is a free and lightweight Windows utility that allows you to quickly and naturally access items you commonly (and uncommonly) use like programs, bookmarks, contacts, and web searches. The idea is to find things quickly just by typing a few keys, selecting your item, and going on your merry way. It’s much more intuitive than hunting down those items as you normally would. It may take a while to break your old habits, but once you do, you’ll see how much more intuitive it is to your normal workflow.

Like the other launchers, Guillotine learns from your actions. As you keep using the software, it “understands” which key presses would display which software first.

The best part of Guillotine is that it doesn’t write anything to the registry. All you need to do is unzip files to a folder of your choice and run it. The first time it runs it will take a while to index all the locations. You can set it to startup with your computer by accessing the preferences. You can perform a search by hitting Ctrl + Space on your keyboard. It displays the window and you can start typing. E.g. typing ‘goo’ displays all the programs, your contacts and even your favorites.

Features

• Fast access to files in common directories (e.g. Start Menu, Quick Launch, My Documents, etc.).
• Fast access to Outlook contacts and bookmarks in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. You will need to install Redemption.
• Fast access to search sites like Google, Yahoo, Wiki, etc.
• Quickly browse your file system using the arrow keys on your keyboard.
• Configurability of all of the above.
• Plugin architecture allows plugin developers to add any type of functionality they want.

Which software are you using as your application launcher? Or, do you still prefer the good old Start Menu?

Download: Zip
Download: Installer