I have found Launchy to be faster than the Start menu method. Also, Launchy learns from your behavior, so if you type [w][o] into Launchy and then select "Word

I have found Launchy to be faster than the Start menu method. Also, Launchy learns from your behavior, so if you type [w][o] into Launchy and then select "Word", it will know in the future that [w][o] should bring up Word first.