Launchy, my favorite application launcher, has just been updated to 2.0. I haven’t heard or seen any updates on Launchy in a while, so it was nice to see that there was an update available. The first thing I noticed was the new default skin that comes with Launchy. There is also a new options window that groups all of the options together under their respective tabs. There don’t seem to be as many skins available by default like there were in the previous version. If you upgrade to 2.0 then you will lose your plugins and configuration from the previous version. Listed below are the new features listed on the Readme included with Launchy.

• Launchy has been completely rewritten with QT
  • Your old plugins/skins will no longer work
  • Your old configuration will be wiped
• A new look! New icons and skin thanks to Tyler Sticka
• Much better skinning support
• Options merged into a single, tabbed dialog
• Skin selection now shows previews
• Plugins much more configurable
• Launchy can hide when it loses focus
• Fade in/out effects
• Customizable transparency
• Optional shallow scan of directories
• Unicode support for Firefox bookmarks
• Vista support

If you’ve never used Launcy before, I recommend giving it a try. It’s free and lightweight, and it will save you a lot of time trying to find a program in your start menu.