windows launcher?
hero character
just wondering what everyone uses for a (keystroke) launcher on windows? i'm on windows 7 and find the start menu input thingy quite awful, also exceptionally well placed next to the shutdown button. bravo! 
looking for something more useable and full-featured that can find executables all over the filesystem and pops up when a hotkey is pressed. basically Alfred from OSX (https://www.alfredapp.com/) is something i'd like to have an equivalent for on windows.
i know about launchy (http://www.launchy.net/) which seems to fit the bill but development has stopped years ago - still worth it - or is there something better?
looking for something more useable and full-featured that can find executables all over the filesystem and pops up when a hotkey is pressed. basically Alfred from OSX (https://www.alfredapp.com/) is something i'd like to have an equivalent for on windows.
i know about launchy (http://www.launchy.net/) which seems to fit the bill but development has stopped years ago - still worth it - or is there something better?
Replies
If you only want to bind your common few programs, you could dock them on the taskbar and use win+# keys to launch them. I've no leads on any better third-party software for this though. For win 7/8 I used to just type the first few characters of the program I wanted and let search do the work; though that seems broken in win10 (some stuff will show up, other stuff won't, not sure if it's an indexing thing or what).
These days though I just use Classic Shell (even in Win 7). You tap the Windows Key and the just start typing. Works like the default start menu but just a little bit better. The only two options I really change concerning launching are enabling "Search Box Selected By Default" and disable "Search The Internet".
another one i just remembered is called enso (https://github.com/GChristensen/enso-portable).