I've always been pretty comfortable around computers and getting things done with them. I know my way around Windows and Mac OS pretty well, allowing me to troubleshoot pretty easily. One of my biggest pet peeve has been the use of shortcuts. I use them a lot to get around programs, from opening new tabs in Chrome, closing windows/tabs/programs, switching application focus, moving from tab to tab, etc and never understood why people don't use them. When I watch people use their computers and click their way around the screen, it feels like an eternity before anything gets done. When I use other people's computers, I still have this habit of using all my shortcuts which is usually not a problem.
The biggest problem I encountered happened so far happened recently when I was at a friend's place helping him out on some computer stuff. I've been using Launchy for over 6 months now and the shortcut to it has become ingrained in my muscle memory for everything I do. Launchy has become such a huge part of how I open programs that I have completely gotten rid of my Start button to make my taskbar even cleaner. Naturally when I was using my friend's computer, my first instinct was to press alt-space to invoke Launchy and open the program I wanted. Obviously that did not do anything and I had to go into the Start menu --> All Programs and then find the program I was looking for. What a chore! It's unbelieveable how slow this seemed compared to Launchy! The weirdest part was that I had not realized that Launchy had become so important to my daily computer use. It's amazing how little things like that can make a computer easier to use. This makes me wonder how much something like Quicksilver would completely change the way I would use my computer. To anyone who has not had a chance to try Launchy, I definitely cannot stop recommending it enough. Get it here --> Launchy
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