Most of you have probably seen different program launchers on various sites. For those who are not familiar with them, program launchers are applications that allow you to choose your most-used or favorite programs and add their corresponding shortcuts to a custom menu.

This is very convenient as you won’t have to go searching through the default Windows start menu to open your favorites apps. This can also reduce clutter on your desktop since you can just have your regular list of apps on your launcher and remove their shortcuts from your desktop.

Sounds good right? The question now is, which one to use? There are a number of great program launchers but I’ll put the spotlight on one of the less known launchers.

8start Launcher is a free program launcher for Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista that will let you create your own customized start menu with the applications of your choice.

You can organize your shortcuts by categories or groups. 8start will let you create your own buttons with different styles for files, folders, shortcuts, web pages, and applications. You can use .jpg, .png, .ico, .bmp, and .gif images for your buttons. The status of your removable and fixed drives’ capacity can be displayed as well.

Another great feature is that you can copy 8start to your flash drive and use it to open files, folders, and programs in your flash drive.

Those of you who love to customize everything will be happy to know that you can download different skins for 8start and even create your own. There’s a tutorial for making your own 8start skins.

Here are some of the available skins you can use with 8start.

With a download size of 1.1 MB, 8start is very tempting to anyone looking for a free program launcher.