Enso Powers Up Your Old Boring Keyboard

I am primarily a keyboard user. And i hate moving over to the mouse for little tasks. ‘Can’t i use just one gadget for doing most of my work?’, is the question that troubles me. Seems like someone heard calls and made Humanized Enso.

Enso is not one thing, it is many. For a short description, it can launch folders, programs, do google, gmail searches for you, make maps, translate, handle your media player, count characters and words, lookup words from the dictionary or thesaurus; all from your keyboard.

Enso is basically a program where commands meet GUI. On installation, your CAPS Lock key is tuned as a command key which ignites the program whenever it is pressed. You then enter a short command and then the function is executed. Sounds difficult? It is NOT.

Let me show you some practical examples:

It is how I open Firefox:

Press Caps Lock. Enso appears. Type O. Leave Caps Lock. The input box is activated. I type Fir and the rest is auto filled. I press Enter, firefox opens.

Perform a calculation:

Press Caps Lock. Enso Appears. Type CA and the rest ‘calculate’ is autofilled. Leave Caps Lock. Input box appears, I type the formula, press enter, answer appears. Currently limited to addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

Check text for spelling errors:

Highlight some text. Press Caps Lock, type spellcheck. Leave Caps. If the text is incorrect, a box will open where it can correct the spellings for you and then correct the written material.

Apart from these, there a LOT of commands you can use. The above mentioned are the preinstalled commands, and you can make more yourself, like for launching a folder:

Select a folder/file in windows explorer, Press caps lock, Enter ‘Learn as open’ , leave caps, now enter the shortcut for that file folder, like songs – for a folder where your songs are stored.

So everytime you want to open that folder, you do this:

Press Caps Lock, Enso Appears. Type O, leave caps lock. The Open Input box appears. You type in So…it autocompletes ‘Songs’ Press Enter. Folder opens.

Once you get the hang of it, it wont seem like tedious task but rather a swift, simple one. The number of commands depends on the flavours of enso you install.

If you want to open and navigate folders and programs, you’ll have to install Enso Launcher; Dictionary and Thesaurus comes with Enso Words. Similarly, for other commands like media player and maps etc, Enso is currently in Beta, but it works very well and you can install all the available betas.

I advice you to install the Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype for the autocomplete to work. There is a lot you can do with Enso. For a better understanding of how it works, check out some screenshots i made. Click to Enlarge:

As I said earlier, Then number of commands you can exucute depends on the flavours of Enso you install. I whole heartedly advice you to install of them. You’ll thank me.

Enso is Free and available for Windows.

Download Options:

Download Enso Words and Launcher

Download All Other Enso Betas

Also check out a video of Enso in action.

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.