Free Launch Bar offers pretty much the same functions and features as the Windows’ standard Quick Launch Bar, but with a very important addition: the possibility of grouping the menus and menu items into categories.
Another aspect of Free Launch Bar that makes it a better replacement to the Quick Launch Bar is, in my opinion, its large number of customization options. It lets you configure a large variety of details concerning the look of the shortcuts and menus. You can, for example, change the colors and the sizes of launchbar’s icons, toolbars, menus and other elements. Furthermore, it allows you to easily add or remove items from the menus. The use of drag-and-drop actions and of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) is also supported.
In conclusion, Free Launch Bar is a nice addition to your collection of installed applications, as it will surely make accessing the shortcuts of your frequently used applications much faster and easier. It is also free.
Pros
- Allows organizing the shortcuts into groups
- Includes a lot of customization options
- Supports drag-and-drop and hotkeys
- Lightweight and resource-friendly
Cons
- Ineffective, superficial "Help" system
Free Launch Bar enabled me to clear out my great confusion of desktop icons and indeed to bring a whole range of other things just a mouse click away, with just a handful of what look like Quick Launch icons on my Windows Vista taskbar. Hovering my mouse over any of those icons opens up an extremely intuitive menu system that I easily set up with Free Launch Bar.Indeed, this free version is so fully featured that I didn't really need to pay for the 'full' version (called True Launch Bar) - but again it was so good that I actually upgraded just in order to pay for such a tremendous piece of work.One great advantage of this utility over other similarly featured program launchers of which I'm aware is its minimal use of system resources, because it uses the native Quick Launch bar system, simply adding the most amazing range of functionality and configurability.Fully recommended!
Excellent! saves space and time, and is not cluttered with stuff you don't need. I will buy the "Pro" version, just to support this really good software.