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Three free productivity booster tools

We, as programmers, see optimization opportunities everywhere, and more when they can be applied to our work tool, the computer. What follows is an enumeration of three tools that will save you precious time in your daily work. To me, they have become indispensable tools. Hope they will become the same for you:

• Launchy. Launchy is a keystroke launcher that clones the behaviour of Quicksilver in Mac OS. With this tool you will say goodbye to your start menu and desktop icons. Everything is now accessible from a few keystrokes: folders, applications and even websites, all with a simple alt + space. The perfect complement for Launchy is StartKiller, a tool for removing the Start button from the taskbar. To me, Launchy is as revolutionary as 4DOS was back in MS-DOS days. How much time did you save? (bonus: and now that you can have a 100% clean desktop it is time to use a decent wallpaper…).
• AutoHotkey. Whatever can not be done with a few launchy keystrokes most likely can be programmed with an AutoHotkey macro. AutoHotkey incorporate a powerful script language that will allow you to automate almost anything: instant access to disk folders, internet tabs, activate tray programs, change visual studio layouts, send email, check calendar, etc.
• xplorer². xplorer² is a file manager with enough features to say good bye to Windows Explorer (Microsoft, admit it, it is not designed for advanced file manipulation). Although there is a professional version, the free lite version is enough to me, especially the Tabbed dual-pane interface feature. With AutoHotkey you can easily redirect Win + E to xplorer².

And that closes out my small contribution to reduce energy wastage in the world . I am sure you can share more gems like these. One more time, thanks for reading.