If you spend most of your time in front of a computer with a sore wrist, then maybe reducing the amount of double clicking you do may help. Launchy is a free utility designed to do exactly this. It cuts out the middle man meaning no more searching the Start menu with the mouse or clicking on shortcuts - just type the name of the program you want to use into the launchy dialogue box and it launches automatically.

Launchy works by indexing your programs and file structures so that you can even use it as your default file explorer. Once running, it hides in the background until you press the 'ALT' and spacebar keys simultaneously. The dialogue bar that appears then searches as you type until the program, file or application you want to launch is found. Hitting the 'ENTER' key then executes the command.

The Launchy website also features some useful hints and tips on getting more out of the program such as Google searches, weather forecasts and even a scientific calculator function.

Ok, so you've just reinstalled your Windows operating system. Your PC runs as smoothly as ever and now it's time to reinstall all those apps you use in your daily life. Each one of us has different favorite apps for different tasks and those are the ones that obviously get installed first. But everytime you reinstall from scratch there's a chance to discover new applications and who knows, maybe that new program you just tested earns a place in your favorites list.

Here's a list of the first ten applications everyone should install on their brand new - or freshly reinstalled - PC. At least, the ones I would install. Any other essentials we missed?

1. Firefox, the web browser
2. Picasa, the photo organizer
3. WinRAR, the file compressor
4. iTunes, the music manager
5. Nero, the CD & DVD recorder
6. OpenOffice, the open source suite
7. AVG, the antivirus
8. PhotoFiltre, the photo editor
9. Zoom Player, the video player
10. XP Codec Pack, all the codecs you need

If you're somewhat turned-off by both the cost and features of Microsoft Office then how about giving an open-source office suite a try? OpenOffice is a project by Sun Microsystems which offers an attractive and intuitive alternative to the big boys.

It operates on multiple platforms in its native format and offers 6 components - Writer, Impress, Math, Draw, Calc and Base. The equivalents with MS Office are pretty obvious except "Impress", which is a powerful presentation program like MS Powerpoint, and "Base" which is an added extra and enables you to compile and manage complex databases.

Many users report that, apart from the obvious advantage that its free, OpenOffice makes the creation and maintenance of highly formatted or long documents easier than Microsoft products, especially Word. There are complaints, however, that interfaces for the respective components are not as well laid out as in MS Office. This is something that Sun have promised to remedy in later editions.

None of OpenOffice's components are as fully developed as MS Office - the grammar checker, for example, is nowhere near as good - although it is on the whole richer in features and generally more stable. OpenOffice, particularly Writer, is a worthy challenger to MS Word although the dominance of MS Office in the home and business market mean that it won't be taking its place quite yet. However, we mentioned a while back that some European governments are already implementing open source software and Internet News reports that as far back as 2004, the Israeli government shunned Microsoft in favour of OpenOffice. Watch this space.

Luckily for some but sadly for others, Christmas is over. Now it's time to go back to harsh reality and forget about the holidays... or maybe not! Because if you used your digital camera while enjoying Christmas dinner or meeting some old friends back in your home town, now it's time to make the most of those pictures.

To begin with, Picasa is a good option to store and organize pictures in your computer. It also allows you to retrieve them easily by means of a handy timeline. Then you can just select the best ones and create a nice printed collage with Arcsoft PhotoImpression.

However, if you’re on the ecological side and don’t want to waste paper, you can always record a photo VCD with the help of MemoriesOnTV. It’s a really easy-to-use piece of software that will enable you to show off your best shots on the DVD player.

If any picture needs retouching, take a look at PhotoFiltre, a powerful app that features everything you may need to edit and optimize photos. Like the well-known Photoshop, but smaller, lighter and cheaper – basically free.

One last tip: don’t forget to resize your pictures before sharing them by email; otherwise the message will take ages to download. VSO Image Resizer will do it for you in just a couple of mouse clicks, saving you time, work and bandwidth.

Keyboard shortcuts are one of those things that most people either use regularly or hardly use at all. I'm a mouse man most of the time because by the time I've taken my hand off it to work out the correct shortcut, I could have done the same thing in half the time with my trusty mouse.

However, someone introduced me to a useful shortcut yesterday that's reinvigorated my interest in finding out how many other shortcuts there are out there. Whenever Windows used to crash, I would bring up the task manager with "CTRL-ALT-DEL" so I could eliminate the process which was causing the problem. In fact, "CTRL-SHIFT-ESC" does the job a lot quicker by going directly to the running processes box rather than starting with the running applications dialogue box.

Anyway, you might be aware of some of them already but here is a selection of 100 Window shortcuts that you may have never used.

I’ve never been very fond of toolbars and other web browser add-ons, basically because the services they’re supposed to offer don’t make up for the amount of resources and space they use. But this toolbar has the Google trademark on it and that encouraged me to test it. If it’s Google, it can’t be that bad.

No sooner said than done. A two minute installation process and you’re ready to go with your brand-new browser companion. At first sight, Google Toolbar looks similar to other add-ons but a deeper look reveals quite interesting functions. Also, the toolbar allows a high level of customization, so you can really choose which buttons to show and which to hide. This is something you’ll be thankful for, especially if you care about the number of free pixels on your screen.

You can be sure that once Bill Gates starts banging on about a new business or technology concept, IT departments everywhere will be clambering aboard the bandwagon. The craze in question this time is ‘mind-mapping,’ a system of planning and structuring ideas through a visual approach. The whole idea is that instead of thinking in a linear fashion when taking notes or brainstorming ideas, you develop a solution in the form of branches radiating from a central core, known as a mind-map.

According to Gates, mind-mapping software can “be used as a digital 'blank slate' to help connect and synthesize ideas and data - and ultimately create new knowledge.” It’s quite rare to hear Bill Gates talking about technology that Microsoft does not have a software program for, so you can take it as read that the Redmond giant is close to an acquisition in this area (or is that just us being cynical).

Chalk another one up for web based applications. If you're already familiar with this type of application and its potential benefits, then go ahead and bookmark this nifty little site right now. Speed reading programs are designed to take a body of text, such as this blog post, and display a few words of it at a time in exactly the same spot on your screen. Most of them have the ability adjust the rate at which these sentence snippets are displayed along with various other features. The idea is that you should be able to progressively increase the number of words displayed each minute, thus reading more text in less time.

Spreeder is certainly not ground breaking but it does illustrate the unmistakable shift from desktop based applications towards web based apps. Here are some of the benefits of a web based world:

• Nothing to download or install
• Doesn't take up hard drive space when it's not being used
• Accessible from any computer with a browser
• Updates are painless and immediate
• Usually has fewer options which can make it easier to use
• The default price is free

Granted some feature-heavy programs like Photoshop will not be appearing in a browser near you any time soon, but there is already basic movie editing "software" available online at Jumpcut, for example. From Microsoft Office to Google Docs and browser bookmarks to Del.icio.us, the speed and convenience of the online world is most certainly on its way.

RSS feeds have become a fashionable way to stay tuned about anything that happens all around the world. The Internet offers constantly updated information which requires lots of time to be read and assimilated. This is why it's always a good idea to get a summary of the latest headlines with just a single click, instead of having to visit a dozen different websites.

Despite the fact that you may already have a favorite RSS reader, we'd like to show you another possibility to access your daily RSS dose, which is graciously hidden inside Adobe Reader 8, the most recent update of the classic PDF viewer.

This is what you have to do: click the View menu and then choose Review Tracker. In the Subscriptions window that appears, click the RSS button on the left toolbar and then click the Subscribe button to add a feed. Voilà! RSS feeds powered by Acrobat. It doesn't offer many features, but still may be a convenient option for PDF lovers.

The latest Beta version of Google's digital imagery app, available for PC and Mac, offers notable improvements, among which exciting support for HDTV, to record your "Earth fly-overs", in case that's how you get your kicks. Car owners, you won't fumble for the next page of driving directions just as you come across an intersection anymore. In this new version of Google Earth you can print out your directions in a turn by turn layout. But the real improvement comes in the form of various overlays to add to the Google Earth experience. Whether you're environmentally-conscious or a real traveler you'll take a real liking to these.

Thanks to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), and in a real effort of raising public awareness, "extreme environmental degradation" zones around the globe have been mapped out. I checked out a digital imagery comparison of Mexico City from 1973 to 1999. It's impressive to see how much the city has sprawled out. The Discovery Networks World Tour is great for getting information on your future travel destinations. I watched videos on the Amalfi Coast in Italy and jotted down a few places that I might check out. National Park Service information is particularly useful if you decide to go trekking, say in Yosemite National Park and want to find out what trails you can take. The Jane Goodall Institute overlay will probably attract wildlife lovers. It picks out chimpanzee preserves around the world. If you're just curious in general, the National Geographic overlay should satisfy your curiosity with hundreds of locations and landmarks pinpointed on the globe. But my favorite function is the Turn Here overlay because you can view short videos of cool spots in many cities. Anybody can submit a video to Google Earth thus sharing what's cool with the rest of the world.

If you write many articles, you probably know what a pain it is to have to regularly skim through a heavy dictionary to find the word you’re looking for. Luckily there’s a whole batch of lexicon applications that’ll send it back to the shelf (or in the trash can) forever. WordWeb is the perfect example of this type of dictionary and thesaurus combo in a hands-on interface.

What you’re looking for in a dictionary application is something you can open in a click, paste your word, and immediately get the results. You get that in Wordweb via system tray integration, and a Ctrl+Alt+W hot key combination. On install WordWeb will ask you the English locale you will use, such as Australian, Canadian American or New Zealander. The program keeps a history of your searches and you can quickly access them via the side arrows. You can refine your search by selecting word category like nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs and decide to show pronunciation, usage and offensive or vulgar words. WordWeb isn’t associated to any world famous reliable dictionary like Webster’s ,preferring its very own online source, comprising of more than 240,000 words and updated regularly, according to the developer.

Staying organized, getting on top of things, multitasking, managing your workflow...the list of reasons to increase your productivity can go on and on. There's a whole range of applications in our Productivity section, but we wanted to outline the ten Windows software we think really matter. So here goes:

1. Rainlendar
2. Freemind
3. EssentialPIM
4. WhereIsIt
5. WakeMeUP!
6. TaoNotes 3D Pro
7. TreePad Plus
8. eTunes
9. EverNote
10. Griffith

What are your favorite productiviy tools for PC? Let us know by leaving a comment.

She may now have retired, but Mavis Beacon is still fondly remembered at Softonic HQ. The badly-rendered typing guru has always been regarded as the digital equivalent of a favourite aunt and is part of the reason why Softonic's blog posts are written so quickly.

The application was designed to help you learn to touch-type or improve your typing speed and accuracy. The original version, which you can download from Flashback, taught you by displaying the layout of a keyboard along with transparent fingers to explain where your hands should be hovering. Mavis would then bark orders, getting you to type what she was saying, and gradually getting faster.

The idea was that after a few hours in Mavis' company you'd be able to touch-type with ease. It didn't do a bad job, but typing tutors have evolved a lot since Ms Beacon's era. For instance, MaxType Typing Tutor allows you not only to test and practice your typing skills with any *.txt file, but to print out test 'diplomas' statistical data, which will give you the information about 20 parameters of your typing and even replay the mtr-record file of your own typing. For younger users, the wonderfully silly Tux Typing is full of enough fun and games to keep kids' fingers tapping for a long time.

It seems somewhat ironic that Internet Explorer’s reign should be undermined by Firefox. After all, this is a browser that rose from the ashes of the team that developed Netscape Navigator, a program which IE ousted to claim the monopoly on the web.

It’s somewhat bizarre that a non-for-profit developer should be in a position to strike fear into world’s biggest software producer, especially while still in the 1.x stage of development of its product. Yet, as many predicted, this eagerly-anticipated release represents a real threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the browser market, with the Mozilla team pumping plenty more into the program and thus upping the bar for IE7.