Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Recommend less known macro apps and text expanders

<< < (7/9) > >>

Innuendo:
I missed this thread the first go-around, but I've always been perplexed as to why text expanders are usually so expensive. Maybe it's because they are used so frequently in the medical and legal professions where people don't blink an eye at high software prices.

Unless I missed it, I didn't see anything from Comfort Software on this list. They have a program called Comfort Typing that is a text expander that has macro support and it only costs $9.95 or $19.95 depending on whether or not you want a lifetime license or not. For the privacy-conscious, it offers 448-bit Blowfish encryption for your saved data as well.

For $10 more you can step up to their 'suite', Comfort Keys which adds in a hot-key manager, on-screen keyboard, clipboard manager, and a few other things.

Might be something for the budget-minded to check into as Comfort Software's pricing is pretty reasonable compared to some products in this thread.

I own a lifetime license for the Comfort Keys suite, but probably don't use it to its full potential. The non-lifetime version was offered free on Bits Du Jour one day & I picked it up...then the next day the developer sent out an email to everyone who took advantage of the offer the opportunity to upgrade to the 'pro' lifetime license version for $10. I figured it was a no-brainer at that price point.

40hz:
I've always been perplexed as to why text expanders are usually so expensive. Maybe it's because they are used so frequently in the medical and legal professions where people don't blink an eye at high software prices.
-Innuendo (June 08, 2014, 10:39 AM)
--- End quote ---

I think it's less that, and more that a 'phrase expander' is a niche product with a relatively small market. So the average pricing is higher.

There's also the issue of support. With niche products, there's usually a higher cost to provide technical support where the average customer is in a professional service job. With profession clients there's always a requirement for higher levels of support plus a more rapid response time. Both are factors that could account for a higher price tag.

Most professions don't blink at higher price tags because time is money to these people. As long as the support is there - and problems get resolved rapidly - the initial cost of software isn't a significant concern. At least most times. Because the professionals know they'll recoup any expenses back in billing as long as their ability to complete their tasks remains unimpaired.

peter.s:
I

Hi Andrea,
I'm not speaking of different vocabularies in different applications, since I don't see a real interest in that; of course, AHK would do that as well if ever anybody needed that.

I'm speaking of different vocabularies, and of combinations of them, a real-life example for the first alternative would be, you write in several languages, and the second alternative would be needed then, e.g. you write in Spanish (not English), but not some general text either for now, but some legal text: Hence the need for a (very basic) combination of "general Spanish" and "legal Spanish", for the special vocabulary, and you will need them both. Then, you also would have some use for a third vocabulary, which would contain the proper names of some "case", even if this third vocabulary included perhaps only 3, 5 or 10 such terms.

All this is definitely possible in AHK (since I use such set-ups every day), and also in Express (since the developer says so, and I don't have any reason to doubt his word on this), whilst in fact, those 30$ expanders I know of, do not offer such a feature.

Btw and from my real-life experience, I should add that the "several languages" part is not that handy for later remembrance (and which must be really quick and "intuitive", in order for an expander to be useful) (and Expander Prof's special drop-down list feature would not be of help but for longer words), but combination of several vocabularies within ONE language is perfectly realizable (and you can even envision different "legal" (or whatever) vocabularies, ditto in the medical world, i.e. for several sub-species within these matters).

To be frank, I'd been afraid this feature had not been introduced between 3 and 4, and that's why I verbalized this matter here, instead of over at bits: Not that my question would have been censored over there, but it would have harmed your business. ;-)

II

"I've always been perplexed as to why text expanders are usually so expensive. Maybe it's because they are used so frequently in the medical and legal professions where people don't blink an eye at high software prices."

"I think it's less that, and more that a 'phrase expander' is a niche product with a relatively small market. So the average pricing is higher."

First explanation being true, second one much less so. If it were only for "niche", outliner prices should skyrock, for an example, but even quite sophisticated outliners (= your main application, in case) are available for much less than each of these 2 leader-of-the-pack expanders (= "just" a tool, a secondary thing in order to optimize what you're doing within your main applic) would cost you.

I once even wanted to trial some other expander, priced at 500$, but was unable to download it, even after giving full credentials incl. tel. number, since I gave them a wrong one, and they insisted on phoning me first, THEN send me a link to download the trial - and I even tried on some Easter week-end, in the faint hope they'd send the link without checking, instead of having wait their prospects a full 5 days... no chance. (And yes, their advertizing was directed to the medical professions.

Similar for the legal profession, and Innuendo gave the right examples, since both professions have constraint and repetitive (in a word: standardized) terminologies, whilst in other, equally high-paid professions, vocabularies usually do not offer those 2 qualities, or rather, the part the respective standardized sub-vocabulary takes in their global writings, is much lesser.

For the information of some: Doctors never typed in big numbers, even with the help of these expanders (whilst laywers often did), but even in the Fifties (and perhaps even earlier in the U.S.), they dictated (first, to sort of gramophone records, just enter "assmann dictation" into the google IMAGE search), and there was a big typists' market around them, in universities, to put those into typewritten pages, and yes, pay counted by these pages.

That's why these now-pc-typists were willing to pay almost any price to speed up not their typing, but filling up those pages with the product of their typing, with the additional benefit of getting those crazy simili-latin terms right, finally, on first try, where before they had bought "Tipp-Ex" in corporate quantities (legal terms being quite easy to type, by comparison).

Of course, dictation-right-into-the-pc (MS Word) has taken over to a very large extent, at least for the legal professions (and yes, the sw is about 800$ or more, instead of about 150$ for the general public), so I'd assume expanders are a receding market, all the more so since flections of words in the non-English world (i.e. way beyond just plural-s's) are really difficult to cope with in expanders, whilst being of no particular difficulty for a good dictation system - of course, it does not really help that there is only ONE such system worldwide being left.

On the other hand, that "niche" isn't that tiny after all, and that remark works for many kinds of "tools". Just remember that whilst "everybody" uses MS Word or some free alternative, the market for paid, alternative text processors has become very tiny indeed (ditto Excel and other MS sw's), but tools in general, anybody can use them, whatever his main applications might be otherwise, and we see a similar phenomenon with paid macro tools.

Btw, there are some expanders which are very good and do cost about 30$, but Expander and Express above are those which are the "big players", so their respective (list) price is in consequence.

"As long as the support is there - and problems get resolved rapidly - the initial cost of software isn't a significant concern." - This is very true, and vice versa, too, and even for individuals, I always preached that they shouldn't look too much onto the price tag on bits or elsewhere: Savings of 15, 30 or 60$ there are negligeable, whist the possible fact you didn't get the very best sw in your price RANGE, will perhaps cost you a little fortune over time (= tco).

III

This is cute:

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.be/ (June 7th, 2014)

"Growing up in Germany, wirebound notebooks weren't very common, if they existed at all. I think they offer no advantages over composition books.

No further comment!" - Whilst I consider Prof. Kühn's Germanese "No further comment!" almost unbearable, I'm very pleased to be informed notebooks grew up on trees in ancient times, over there, and I'm sorry for this method of upbringing being not that successful, though.

IV

And finally, since this thread does not have its proper "Pets are like people, only better yet!" link of the week yet, here it is:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/10072164/Dogs-make-emergency-call

where Stella and Stuart, hilarious French bulldogs (see their photo, such adorable creatures!), first devour dozens of potentially dangerous-for-them drugs, then activate the panic button a dozen of times to get help.

rjbull:
I missed this thread the first go-around, but I've always been perplexed as to why text expanders are usually so expensive. Maybe it's because they are used so frequently in the medical and legal professions where people don't blink an eye at high software prices.-Innuendo (June 08, 2014, 10:39 AM)
--- End quote ---
I wouldn't completely agree with that.  The most powerful expander is probably Instant Text, which is genuinely expensive at $189 for a non-expiring license (they offer 3, 6 and 12 month licenses for much less).  I hear that medical transcriptionists would recover that in a matter of weeks.  I'm not sure the profession of medical transcriptionist even exists outside the USA, but that doesn't stop IT being useful for other things.  I've just been slightly shocked to find that a license for Typing Assistant is $69, much more than when I bought my first one some years back (and recent versions developed for Win7 & Win8 have issues on my Vista).  Phrase Express basic version is officially free for personal use, and they also offer free for all uses entry-level Autotext.  Breevy, which on short acquaintance seems a very nice expander, is $34.95.  There are several others below about $35.

Unless I missed it, I didn't see anything from Comfort Software on this list. They have a program called Comfort Typing that is a text expander that has macro support [...] For $10 more you can step up to their 'suite', Comfort Keys which adds in a hot-key manager, on-screen keyboard, clipboard manager, and a few other things.-Innuendo (June 08, 2014, 10:39 AM)
--- End quote ---
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, Comfort Keys offers text completion from a dictionary, but not text expansion.  I asked its author once about expansion, and he replied that he'd put it into an earlier version but nobody used it, so he took it out again <sigh>  DC has numerous threads on text expanders; in one of them someone makes the point (I'm quoting from memory and may not be perfectly accurate) that we should distinguish between text completion, text expansion and text correction.  IT majors on expansion, Breevy adds correction, Typing Assistant and Phrase Express offer everything.  Text Accelerator looks more suited to programmers who can write scripts for it.

Innuendo:
in one of them someone makes the point (I'm quoting from memory and may not be perfectly accurate) that we should distinguish between text completion, text expansion and text correction.  IT majors on expansion, Breevy adds correction, Typing Assistant and Phrase Express offer everything.  Text Accelerator looks more suited to programmers who can write scripts for it.-rjbull (June 10, 2014, 04:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well, please help me understand the differences between text completion, text expansion, and text correction. I looked at the product pages for IT, Breevy, and Typing Assistant and Comfort Keys *appears* to do most of what they can do, but I could be overlooking something.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page