The first thing to do is to install Launchy. This will give you awesome application launching skills. Just press alt + space and start typing the app you want to launchy. It remembers stuff, so I can now launch Firefox by just pressing “f” and then enter. You will then have to install the script from Lifehacker which is a bit more complicated than extracting an archive, but nothing you can’t handle, take a look at the site for the instructions.

Once done, you can add items to a list easily, by just typing “rtm”, pressing tab, entering the task name and then enter. This will add that task to your inbox. If you want a bit more control you can add a due date, the list name, priority, tags and notes, in that order, by pressing tab after each one, and enter at the end.

This method is  so great, because it is really quick, and it also enables you to add tasks without having to go to the site. You can just add tasks all day, and maybe take 15 minutes at the end of each day to manage your tasks.

The interface is beautiful, simple lines, simple design all round. The text is a wonderfully ambient gray, bullet points are simply round dots, even menu graphics are refined and un-flashy. This is a big plus in my book, it looks great, while remaining subdued.

Creating a list and editing the entries is pretty much all the functionality right now, with clipping from the web as an added bonus. You can use bold text, linking, tagging and so on, but nothing like the advanced geotag features of Remember The Milk. There are some nice features though for ordering your lists, like indenting, collapsing all and showing all. While simple tools, these are really enough for creating an organized list.

There is also a community behind the whole project, as you would expect in a web 2.0 app. If you make a list viewable to the public, people can come and take a look, if the proper setting is applied they can even edit it. Hot lists will be featured in the community page for all to see as well, so Microsoft is trying to put a “social engine” behind it.

That’s actually all there is to it right now. It’s already a solid task manager and I await the release of new features, there will undoubtedly be some tie-ins to other Microsoft online apps, we’ll have to see what happens. I’m optimistic, since I think Microsoft realized that the only way it can keep on competing if it can show its strength in free online stuff as well. Let’s hope there will be huge competition, since we all profit from that.