Windows Quick Launch Keyboard Shortcuts
The Windows Quick Launch bar, those little icons to the right of the start button, is over 10 years old. In that time, Microsoft has done little to enhance it's functionality. You can add dozens of Quick Launch items if you want to, but they all require a mouse click to activate. Windows Vista adds a new feature to the Quick Luanch bar — keyboard shortcuts. For the first 10 items (and who really needs more than 10?) you can use the Windows key + the corresponding number key of the sequence to easily launch the application you want without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard.
For instance, in the image below Windows key + 1 launches Outlook, Windows key + 2 launches Firefox, all the way up to Windows key + 9 launching Quicken. If there were a tenth item on the list, Windows key + 0 would launch it.
If you don't use Windows Vista, here's some more Windows key shortcuts to save you time. You can also create your own shortcuts for anything using additional software.