Find and Launch anything inside your computer with Find and Run Robot (FAAR)

Overview:

Find and Run Robot (FARR) is a program for keyboard maniacs -- it uses an adaptive "live search" function to rapidly find programs and documents on your computer as you type.

Press your chosen hotkey to display the FARR window, then just start typing the first letters of the application you want to launch and the results appear instantly. Hit enter to launch the top result, or refine your search with special modifiers and commands.

FARR also lets you quickly run web searches, send email, manipulate files, control on-screen windows, and much more. Build and share custom commands or install plugins to add tons of new features, like live search features for your clipboard history and your internet bookmarks; a popup a calculator with history tape and persistant variables; and many more..


Features:

• Ready to run, right out-of-the-box with no configuration needed.
• The most customizable application of its kind, for those who love to tweak settings.
• Caches programs you launch for instantaneous repeat searches and adaptive scoring.
• Comes with dozens of built-in special alias commands that allow you to perform tons of different web searches and other operations.
• Create and share (xml) alias packs with your friends or download them from our site to add custom commands and menus.
• Install (open source) plugins to add advanced functionality.
• A dozen plugins are available at launch time, including a powerful clipboard monitor and searcher; a live calculator with history tape and persistant variables; a bookmark searcher plugin that supports firefox, internet explorer, and opera; plugins to manage running processes, uninstall programs, change the default printer, control external applications, and more.
• Low system overhead, fully portable and runnable from a USB thumbdrive, and doesn't mess with your registry.
• Drag+Drop results from the result view; quick right click to access file system properties or advanced functions.
• No file indices are used, so results are always up to date with minimal memory use.
• Choose from dozens of skins and customize the fonts sizes of all graphical elements of the user interface, or turn off skins completely and revert to default Windows user interface. Choose between a compact small-icon mode, or an easy-to-read large icon mode.
• Full directory browsing function with live search filtering -- manually browse and locate the files you are looking for.
• Customizable toolbar for common functions and operations (optional; with drag+drop support).
• Automatic updating for main program and plugins (optional).
• Customize hotkey triggers to launch and perform specific searches, or copy selected text to the clipboard at launch .
• Fully documented and actively developed with new features being added regularly based on user requests on our forum.
• Completely free; signup requested and donation recommended -- your donations fund continued development!

Review:

FAAR (Find and Run Robot) is pretty much one of the best application launchers that i have had the pleasure of using. Like Launchy it uses input from the keyboard in order to launch files or programs. it does this while using little system resources and can index things really fast, i searched and launched a program with FAAR that i had just installed, talk about speed! in addition to launching programs you can make web searches in sites like wikipedia, make quick notes and look words definitions. but the real fun is in the great list of plugins that can be used to greatly expand the funcionality of FAAR. you can add some really cool things like a calculator, a quick timer and access special Windows functions like shutdown only by typing "cmd".
If these functions are not enough you can make your own by creating aliases which are special words that can create special searches, for example you can make an alias in which you can use the search function of a website directly. for example an alias called elitefreeware + the keyword you are searching for can open your browser with the search results. adding these types of alias is easy but you will need to look up some documentation to create more complex aliases.
FAAR uses very little system resources, in my system it only used 3 to 7MB of RAM which is great! oh you can also use it in your pendrive which makes this a great portable application.
So if you would like to try an application launcher then i can't recommend enough Find and Run Robot, its truly awesome. Available for Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/