The new Vista Start button has a great search tool built right in. Now you can press the Windows key and type the first couple of letters of the program or document you want to open. Vista does more than show the first item in the long list in the Start Menu. It sorts the matches so that the most used items are listed first.
When I press the Windows key and then type “wo”, I get Word because I use that program often. “ex” takes me to Excel and “po” brings up PowerPoint. If I’m looking for a recently used spreadsheet, I can type “xls” and all my spreadsheets are listed, with the most recently opened file at the top. This works for any type of file: doc, ppt, txt, jpg… any file extension.
Over time, your Vista search tool will get better at finding what you want quickly. I use it to open everything in the Start menu.
TSPY=3.60