It's been a long day. I overslept, and woke up to find a lot of unread mail to be read, blog comments to be answered, and skins to be downloaded.

My bad. I usually keep working on the PC till like 4 in the morning, which is why I'm unavailable all day.

As I said, had a long tiring day sorting my mail and blogs, and going away for three hours over to my grandparent's place leaving important work undone didn't help matters. So I decided to make a list of 5 applications that have made life easier, at least for me. If you have some additions of your own, feel free to add them.

In no particular order [I had trouble deciding between Windows Live Writer and Launchy]

5. Launchy -

    This mini app is a killer application launcher. It searches for all the available applications in your PC. Launching your applications is easy, just press the hotkey combination and enter a letter/word/phrase in the mini bar that appears. Launchy will find matches and show the best matching app in the bar. If you click on it, it'll show the other available matches too. You can do the same for quickly accessing websites. Just configure Launchy's options to include your favorite websites or access preset URLS [such as Google or YouTube]. When you've found your website/app/folder/file just press enter. It hardly takes more than  seconds, compared to how long it takes to navigate your start menu, or folders, searching for files.

Launchy hides in the background, and you can access it by pressing ALT+Space. Plus, it has a few extra skins if you don't like the default one.

You can download it here at Download.com

4. Mozilla Thunderbird- 

   Oh, who am I kidding? Everyone has heard of Thunderbird. But a short intro for those who don't know, Thunderbird is an email client designed my Mozilla [Yes, the same company that brought Firefo x to you]. But it's not an ordinary email program; Thunderbird boasts excellent organization of emails in folders and files. You can organize, sort and label mail in your way. The search feature is pretty helpful if you're looking for a lost message through cluttered mail. Like Firefox, Thunderbird can be personalized with add-ons. It also fits in with many online email providers, such as Gmail and Yahoo.

Download at Mozilla's site here

3. ObjectDock-

   Brought to you and me by Stardock, ObjectDock adds a dock to your desktop. You can add your folder/file/URL/programs/etc shortcuts to it, which is easy as drag and drop. ObjectDock also displays tiny widgets, called docklets. Included docklets include weather, search, calendar, and some more; but you can get more on WinCustomize too.

I can't say enough for OD, let alone OD Plus. The Plus version adds a lot more features to your dock [tabbed docks, more than one dock, system tray support, taskbar support, and more] for a mere $20. The free version can be downloaded from Download.com or Stardock.

Disclaimer: You don't have to upgrade to the OD+ version if you don't want to. It won't nag you to do so, and for people who want to try it out, I suggest you get the free version, which is an excellent start in itself.

Download here at Stardock

2. SysMetrix

Oh yes, you might think that Sysmetrix is just a standalone eye candy widget, but it's actually a time saver for me. SysMetrix is a skinnable app that shows valuable PC and miscellaneous information on your desktop without using any resources. You can skin it to your preferences to show just the time, or everything in it's potential, which includes hard drive space, CPU and memory usage, time, date, email count, recycle bin contents, CPU temperature, wind speed, Internet traffic, and so much more that I've actually forgotten it. You can find a vast collection of skins at WC.

How it helps me? Well obviously, knowing the weather, CPU usage, and email count at a glance is always time saving. By the way , I'm biased towards it because it looks great on my desktop.

Download here on Xymantix Online

1. Windows Live Writer-

The application that I used to write this post, the application I used to publish my articles, the application I'd pay a hundred bucks for, the application that has no parallel.

Enough praise done, Windows Live Writer is a part of the Windows Live package of programs. It makes it easy for you to publish rich content to your blog, as the tool tip says when I hover my cursor over it. Briefly, its a word processor that allows you to set up a blog, (on Windows Live Spaces, or elsewhere), or use an existing blog, and publish posts to it right from your desktop, without using a browser. I guess I'll take a lot of space if I started describing it, so you should read more of it at Windows Live's site. In short, it's a killer program that allows you to publish articles, add pictures/videos/maps/tables/tags/hyperlinks/etc to them, save copies for backup or future editing, view your posts before posting them, and integrate your blog's theme in the WLW interface. For any blogger, it's a must have.

For downloading the whole Windows Live package, go here. It's included in the package, and I couldn't find a separate download link.

These were my favorite apps; any app you can't live without? Feel free to add them!