Month: December 2008

This post is in response to Jeff Blankenburg’s post about the contents of his Quick Launch bar.

Nothing. Mine is turned off. Here’s what my start menu looks like though. I have turned off the display of my recently opened programs, and I dragged these shortcuts out there. (This is my work notebook.)

Internet Explorer 8 – I use it mainly to see what’s new in IE8 and when Firefox doesn’t render something correctly (hardly ever).

Firefox 3 – My primary web browser. The plug-in support is the difference-maker for me.

Outlook 2007 – Used for my work email. I also use the Outlook Connector to access one of my Hotmail accounts.

Windows Live Mail – I use this to access my other Hotmail account. I could put them both in Outlook, but I like to keep my hands in Live Mail too.

visionapp Remote Desktop 2008 – A fantastic remote desktop management tool with a very low price tag.

Visual Studio 2005 – Still some existing development work in VS2005.

Visual Studio 2008 – For all new development. Also, for playing around with new stuff out on CodePlex.

SQL Server Management Studio – ‘nuff said.

Visual SourceSafe – All of our old releases are still in VSS.    -cringe-

Command Prompt – Launches as Administrator.

FileZilla – For all my FTP client needs, mostly for uploading files to my blog.

Windows Live Writer Beta – The best blogging client for Windows.

Word 2007 – Because it’s MS Word.

Paint.NET – My favorite image editing tool… and it’s free!

Zune – My current media player, but MediaMonkey is still the default on my home PC and my favorite.

Services – Because sometime you just have to stop some services.

Event Viewer – A developer’s friend.

Programs and Features – This is here because I’m always installing and uninstalling stuff from CodePlex and MS Downloads.

Windows Update – I want to be the first one to get my Windows Defender definition updates!

So, that’s my list. What’s in your Quick Launch bar and/or Start Menu and/or Launcher of choice?