14 DAY TRIAL // You must agree with me when I say that the number of Start Menu items increases every day, not only for the advanced PC users, but also for the regular users. Every day we find the need or pleasure to install and test new applications. And, at the end, you will see that you must open folder after folder to get to the shortcut you really need to access. Not to mention that not all software products provide options to delete the Start Menu entries when you uninstall the product. Put it all together and you will find yourself in my situation: when I click the Start button and move the mouse over the Programs folder, it opens half a desktop with items, folders and shortcuts. At that time, you realize that many applications you removed still have Start Menu items. QuickCut Launcher does a great job in searching through your Start Menu items and provides ways to sort and lunch the ones you want.
The QuickCut Launcher application will index all your Start Menu items. It will search and index your Favorites folder too. From the beginning, when you start QuickCut Launcher, it will create a list with all the items from Start Menu and from Favorites folder. The process repeats itself every time you start the application. This is good because, if you have new entries in your Start Menu or have added new favorite links, and QuickCut Launcher is not running, then you cannot launch them unless they were indexed. The basic principle is to access your applications more easily.
QuickCut Launcher provides a way to sort the items that are indexed. From the Options tab menu, select Filter and you can enter the keywords or phrases - separated by commas - that you do not want to include. So, if you do not want QuickCut Launcher to index DOC files, add this name to your filter list. QuickCut Launcher sits on your system tray and can be called using a predefined Hotkey that can be changed. By default, QuickCut is trying to register as a startup object. Besides the Filter option, there is another feature that is very useful when it comes to sort the indexed files - the "Executables Only" from Options menu. When selected, QuickCut will only show the files that have EXE as extension.
If you have a large number of items in your Start Menu and Favorites folder and you want to separate the shortcuts you use more often, you can add the ones you want to your favorites list. This feature is very useful and can help you launch the shortcuts you use frequently. For each shortcut, you can explore the Start Menu location or the folder where the application is installed. It would be an advantage if QuickCut could scan, besides the Start Menu and Favorites, a specified folder.
What I found very unpleasant at QuickCut was the fact that, after you select a certain shortcut and launch it several times, it does not highlight the most used ones. For example: if you enter DVD in the search area and you have a list with DVD Player, DVD Burner and DVD Ripper and you select DVD Player, which is the third one in the list (in alphabetical order), at the next search, if you enter DVD, the first item from the list should be DVD Player.
Another thing that I was happy to find was that it can be used as a shortcut remover. You can delete the unwanted shortcuts from your Start Menu. QuickCut Launcher comes with a 30 days trial period and costs $14.95. If you ask me, the price does not reflect in any way what QuickCut Launcher is offering. There are many other launchers that offer a lot more features for free.
The Good
It made a small test with a large number of shortcuts to be indexed (~ 950), and I must say that QuickCut Launcher did recognized all of them and it did sort them according to the keywords from filter list. During the test, I used QuickCut Launcher to clean my Start Menu, because it can delete the shortcuts you don't need.
The Bad
It does not offer many features and options to choose from and the price does not justify itself. It cannot scan and add index shortcuts from specified locations, or highlight the most used shortcut from the list.
The Truth
You have 30 days to test the software and see if you want to buy it. Try to see the useful features that it provides and think in what situations you might need it. The index process is limited to Start Menu items and Favorites folder and you cannot add new locations.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
