10 Quicksilver alternatives for Windows

Quicksilver, the Swiss Army Knife of productivity apps, can do just about everything except file your taxes and bake you warm delicious cookies.

Lifehacker’s Adam Pash calls it the “the best productivity application on the market today,” aptly summarizing its power:

Quicksilver can be used to launch files and applications, manipulate data, and seamlessly plug into almost any application on your Mac so that you can perform actions as soon as you think of them in a few short keystrokes.

Sounds fantastic, but there’s gotta be a catch, right?

Yep, it’s Mac only.

Before you start shaking your fists and hurling rocks through Steve Jobs’ window, check out Scott Hanselman’s list of Quicksilver-like launchers for the PC. Scott’s done a great job summarizing each app with a review and shot. His list includes:

1. Slickrun
2. SmartStartMenu
3. slimKEYS
4. Colibri
5. Launchy
6. AppRocket
7. ActiveWords
8. Dave’s Quick Search Bar
9. Google Desktop
10. Find and Run Robot

While none of these apps perfectly replicate all of Quicksilver’s functions, Scott recommends Colibri for the closest experience.

Being a Mac junkie, I have little experience with Colibri. But do any of you? Does it truly compare to Quicksilver?

via Scott Hanselman