All keyboards have a CAPS Lock button, but how often do you actually use it? If you’re like me, you probably press it accidentally more than you press it on purpose. What if you could put that button to good use? Wouldn’t that be great?

Unless you’ve just installed a fresh copy of Windows XP, chances are your Start Menu is a ridiculously large list. As you install applications over time, it becomes more and more difficult to find the one you want! What if there was an easier, faster way to launch applications? Wouldn’t that be great?

Humanized’s Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype solves both of these problems at once.

I’ve been using a launch utility called Launchy for quite a while now, but the latest version has been nothing but trouble for me. It uses far too much memory and CPU, and most of the useful plugins from the old version don’t work in 2.0. So I went looking for something better (to be clear, this is far less of an issue on Vista thanks to the search functionality of the Start Menu).

Eventually I came across Enso. I noticed that there was a new “prototype” version out, and decided to download that instead of the stable release. I’m glad I did! Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype runs in the background, and is summoned simply by holding down the CAPS lock button.

It’s important to note “holding down the CAPS lock button”. One of the unique things about Enso is that it is quasimodal – as soon as you let go of the CAPS lock button, it disappears. The way most applications work is with a hotkey, they are modal – press the button and the window appears until you get rid of it. You can read more about that here. It might seem awkward at first, but it actually makes a ton of sense and is pretty easy to get used to.

I guess Enso 2.0 is actually quasimodal and modal…that is, you hold CAPS to open Enso, and type the “open” command to get the modal box shown above.

Enso does more than just launch applications, websites, files and directories. It has some other handy commands such as “uppercase” which will convert whatever text is selected into uppercase letters. It can also do things like calculate “2+2”. More than a launcher, Enso is a command system.

My only complaints thus far are that Enso seems to launch after everything else does on system startup, and occasionally it crashes. It’s definitely solid enough for day-to-day use though.

If you’re looking for an excellent launch utility, give Enso 2.0 a shot, and put your CAPS lock button to good use! (for the record, you can configure it to use a different key)