Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Bartels Media paranoia

(1/14) > >>

rjbull:
I recently started using a registered copy of PhraseExpress Pro.  I knew it was capable of being portable, which could be useful to me, but it didn't seem to work like Intellicomplete or Comfort Keys do, at the word level.  That is you can define your own words and short forms, but it doesn't seem to have a ready-made dictionary built in.  So I put a message in their forum:
Please excuse my ignorance, new user query...  I'm already using my own multi-word phrases plus some words I've defined.  But to make PhraseExpress behave like Intellicomplete/Comfort Keyboard etc. which come pre-loaded to give you pop-up lists of words at the cursor, do I need to import a dictionary into PhraseExpress, or something like that?
--- End quote ---

I'd have thought that was pretty innocent.  After all, we've all looked at other softwares, and nothing is developed in complete isolation.  I got an e-mail from Bartels Media of which the operative part reads:
Thank you for taking the time to write us about PhraseExpress.

Please note that the PhraseExpress forum is not about other programs.

For a start, we recommend to study http://manual.phraseexpress.com first to
learn more about how to use PhraseExpress.
--- End quote ---
How tetchy can you get?  PhraseExpress seems a good product, but they want us to believe and act as if nothing else exists?  Don't they have any confidence their product is good enough to beat the opposition?  You can't even mention any other program as an example, to explain what you mean?  When I entered my post, their forum changed "Intellicomplete" to "another software!"  They since deleted the post.

I've read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I used to work for a big company with a Stalinist culture, so I've had my fill of paranoid megalomania.  I deleted my registration key and uninstalled PhraseExpress.  So, until the Instant Text people come up with a version that runs on Vista with UAC = yoU Aren't Computing On, I suppose I'll have to use AutoHotkey, just like everybody else.  I'd still be interested in alternative portable apps, though.

f0dder:
Wow, what morons - amazing that there's still people acting that way in this day and age. Definitely bad enough that I wouldn't want to be a customer of those :)

yksyks:
I had exactly the same experience. When I mentioned in my forum post the TapTap utility, because I suspected it of interfering with PhraseExpress, the sentence was immediately deleted and I received a ubiquitous reply that they cannot help me if I am using "third party programs". This attitude surely repelled many customers.

mwb1100:
I suppose I'll have to use AutoHotkey, just like everybody else.
-rjbull (February 11, 2010, 08:52 AM)
--- End quote ---

You realize that AutoHotkey stole all their ideas from PhraseExpress, don't you?

TucknDar:
I've had something similar happen, when I got some false reports about me using the free version for professional work, which I posted about. The post was deleted within minutes and I got an e-mail about the issue. To their defense, though, they did fix my issue promptly.

It's too bad they behave like this, because it really is an extraordinary product! I'm sure AHK can do pretty much the same, but I'd rather keep the advantages of the PhraseExpress dialogs and features  :-\

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page