Over the last couple of months, my infatuation has been in trying to reduce my Windows workday of all the needless RSI inducing Microsoft navigation and user interface. There are few things that I hate more than having to yet for my stupid programs folder to load up and then have to search like a madman to find a program I use once every few months. Quicklsilver for the Mac OS X make finding files, applications as easy as writing a sentence. Hit [CTRL]-[SPACE] and then type in few letters to find the file or application which we will call a noun. And then based on your noun, you can choose a series of actions: verbs. And then based on the verb other actions can take place as well. My favourite power move is to highlight a few desktop items then invoke the [current selection] from there you can choose to move it to another folder without ever having to open up a finder window.
So how does Launchy compare to Quicksilver? Not very well, but is a great start for Windows. It does the application launching and file searching pretty well. The biggest limitation is the fact that most of the really cool features of Quicksilver are based on using even cooler Mac Os X features and core elements. Something that is seriously lacking in Windows (XP and Vista take your pick). It seems that if you ever want to do anything a little different, you need to create a Visual Basic Script or a full blown .exe application. Which obviously makes it nearly impossible for most power users in a corporate environment to do anything at all.
So far Launchy looks like it will be really useful if the development community really kicks in and gets some more plugins out the door to interact with the OS and other opensource apps like Pidgin, FileZilla, Snarl and of course FireFox.