In Win7? Tap the Windows key and type the name of the program. At least for a power user, this is quite nice. It's arguably on par with Spotlight as an application launcher, with similar trade-offs (e.g. multiple matches--- which is the right one?).
I'm not a huge fan of Windows, but this is one thing that Win7 (or Vista?) substantially improved over XP.
I'm not a huge fan of Windows, but this is one thing that Win7 (or Vista?) substantially improved over XP.