- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
- Date added: August 27, 2009
- Total Downloads: 14,150
- Downloads last week: 49
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 18 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
Executor is a program launcher powered by hot keys and keywords, both customizable to an impressive degree. A skinnable bar appears at the top of your screen that makes up the most trafficked aspect of the program, with an extensive and organized list of settings available from the Windows Taskbar. As soon as you type in the first few characters of the program that you're looking for into the main UI, a list of potential choices appears. The more you type, the shorter the list becomes, or you can scroll down to click the item you want.
Customization here is no joke. Users can choose to drag an object onto the bar to create a keyword for said file, folder, or favorite. This is an interesting work-around for the less-than-compelling search feature, which works great with programs but needs to be told via the Settings menu to index your entire hard drive. Another built-in alternative takes advantage of the native Windows searching system, for both XP and Vista users. Users should be able to type "find [text]" and Executor will search for that text.
However, the keyword feature itself works great. Change that "find" to "addremove" and Executor automatically opens up the Windows native Add/Remove Programs options from the Control Panel. It feels like everything else in Executor can be customized, from such superficial aspects such as the skins to how the autocompletion function behaves. You can set it to override the Windows Run hot key, you can swap hot keys around, and you can set URLs, files, or programs to launch as Executor starts. Executor should appeal to power users who are looking to accomplish specific program-launching tasks within a framework that offers a lot of leeway for customization.
Publisher's description
From Chaos Manager :Executor is a multipurpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of Windows Run. The program originated as I was sick of spending too much time searching for programs through my ever growing windows start-menu, and also I missed a tool that could ease and optimize my daily work flow. There was of course already programs like this available, but each had it's annoyance or missing features or too geeky. Features include: keywords that have properties like shortcuts--for example you can drag and drop a shortcut/file/folder/favorite to add it as a keyword; auto-completion for keywords, file system and history; URL detection; parameter-supported keywords like "Google latest executor" or "wiki nirvana"; dynamically added start-menu items, control panel items and other handy items to the drop-down/list; and the ability to add your own paths to scan for user defined file extensions.
Version 0.99 adds automatically launching nearest match if no exact match, clipboard commands, and a lot of other new features and fixes.
What's new in this version:
Version 0.99 adds automatically launching nearest match if no exact match, clipboard commands, and a lot of other new features and fixes.More popular Launchers downloads
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.2 stars out of 18 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 4 of 4 user reviewsSee all 4 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Executor 0.9.9
Pros: Very simple and powerful.
Easy to configure and maintainCons: None encountered so far.
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Version: Executor 0.9.9
Pros: It does what is has to do, quickly and with a nice look. No trouble at all.
Cons: Nothing. Why not five stars? Only if a next version does not come :')
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Version: Executor 0.9.9
"Simple solution for many irritants"
Pros: Easy set up, easy to use. Does what it promises. Great tool for those who want to reduce mouse usage, especially on Vista which has done away with accelerator keys.
Cons: UI is a dated. But so what?
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Version: Executor 0.9.9
Pros: Absolutely everything about this program is great,things. I personally never use the start menu anymore, I've had this program for 1 year now and i have it tweaked to my uses, Memory usage is minimal = steady 12mb with 3,000 indexed items.
Cons: CPU usage gets high when it performs indexing, but that's the case with all search programs and such, WIth a dual core 2.4 GHZ machine and 3,000 indexed items, cpu usage jumps to 25-40% for around 8-15 seconds while indexing
Summary: Definitely recommended for those that have used launchy, or those that use the run commands on their pc. This is definitely one of the best launchers out there.
- See all 4 user reviews Write review
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