When I do programming I switch between my IDE, a browser and the command prompt very often. I prefer to use keyboard shortcut to do this because I generally tend to use mouse as little as I can. Windows has well-known alt+tab and win+tab shortcuts to switch between opened programs. But having other programs like e-mail client or music player opened makes switching between my primarily used programs somewhat inconvenient. Recently I found a much quicker way to do this with Windows 7 taskbar. You can use windows key with number from 1 to 9 to open applications pinned to the taskbar at given position. If the application is not started yet then pressing the shortcut will start it. Otherwise it will just bring it into focus. You can also use shift+win+number to start a new instance of the application regardless of whether it is already started.
Moving frequently used applications to the beginning of the Windows 7 taskbar makes starting and switching between them easier
What I did is I moved my most frequently used programs to the beginning of the taskbar so I have them available under low numbers. Now I press win+1 to open the IDE, win+2 to open the browser and win+3 to open the command prompt. This way switching between these applications is faster than using alt+tab especially when other applications are opened. Starting them is also faster than using a launcher like Launchy. I can also start multiple command prompt instances by pressing shift+win+3.
