My workflow, from turning on lappy is, click on one of them pick icons with my mouse, usually just Desktop, and then I have all my day to day programs pinned to my task bar.
If I then want to open say Paint, which I don't have pinned, I click on the windows key, start typing pai, and by that time, the Paint icon has focus and I hit enter, so my hands don't even reach for the mouse until I need to.
I'm looking forward to 10 though, because, even though I haven't seen it yet, it will cater for all our needs