Karen's Once-A-Day II

Creating a list of applications to be executed when a user logs in or when the computer starts can be useful, and while Microsoft Windows does provide some features to enable this type of automation, they are not as easy to configure as Karen's Once-A-Day.

Installing and setting up Karen's Once-A-Day is easy. Once the installation process is complete, users can launch the program and begin automating their startup.

The software features a simple interface composed of at least three tabs. The first tab, labeled Welcome, is used to display general information about the software and its use. The next tabs enable users to create and manage lists of startup tasks. Each list has its own tab and lists can be created for each of the PC's users. Programs to be run the first time the machine starts can be scheduled to do so from a dedicated tab.

Adding tasks to any of the lists is easy and intuitive. One simply has to enter the address of each of the programs that should be run and a short description. Arguments can be specified in order to be passed to the program when it will be executed, but this is optional. Users can also have applications on the list wait until the previous ones have finished their execution before launching, however there is no way of setting a delay ( measured in seconds or minutes ) between the launch of two items on the list.

Multiple tasks can be specified and the order in which they will be run can be modified by making use of two buttons situated to the right of the list.

To sum it up, this software solution provides an easy way of launching applications when users first log-in or boot their PCs. Due to its low resource footprint, it is responsive even on older PCs and it did not crash or hang during testing. However, its lack of features, such as the timed delays measured above can make it less appealing for some users.