The tiny, free/donationware Lacuna Launcher can kick off multiple programs at once, and will wait between launches for as long as you tell it. There's no installation, but it takes a little manual tweaking to set up.
After downloading and unzipping Lacuna Launcher, you'll have a folder with an 'll' program icon, a text file named 'list' and another README file with instructions and more info. If you double-click the program's icon, it will launch any and all files or programs listed in the "list" text file. To use it, your easiest option is to just modify tht text file.
To have the launcher use a different startup file for a second batch of apps, or to tell it to delay between starting programs (to give each time to fully start before moving on to the other, for instance), start by right-clicking the ll icon and creating a shortcut. Then modify that new shortcut's Target line to list the full path of your list file, the amount of time to wait (in seconds) before launching items, and the amount of time to wait between launching items. For example:
"C:\Documents and Settings\Erik\Desktop\LacunaLauncher\ll.exe" "C:\Documents and Settings\Erik\Desktop\LacunaLauncher\list2.txt" 2 5
tells Lacuna Launcher to read the "list2.txt" file for the list of programs to start, to wait 2 seconds before starting anything, and to wait 5 seconds between launches.
While relatively simple, the app's ability to launch programs, shortcuts (.lnk files), Web pages (in the form of a .url file) and other files could prove useful to power users who like to automate as much as possible, especially since the Launcher allows for time delays (and Windows XP batch scripts don't).
Note: This link downloads the latest version of the software from the vendor's site. The program's author requests donations though DonationCoder.com.
--Erik Larkin
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