UltraEdit Review and Giveaway ($50 value)

[cybernetnews]

I normally don't post links to our own articles, but when mouser was on the hunt for the best text editor he gave the top award to the UltraEdit application. We decided to thoroughly review the application ourselves, and thought it would be fun to start a giveaway.

All you have to do to enter is head on over to the article and tell us how you would use UltraEdit:
http://cybernetnews.com/2007/10/16/cybernotes-ultraedit-review-giveaway/
Just make sure to enter in an email address!

Can't get much simpler than that, and you surely can't beat the chance to get a $50 app for free! 

[Darwin]

Thanks for this, Ryan. I already have a lifetime licence so will let others more needy than myself post on your thread. I love ultraedit and use it primarily as a more powerful text editor (ie don't code with it or write html).

[Ralf Maximus]

Agreed, UE is the best.

[cybernetnews]

Thanks for this, Ryan. I already have a lifetime licence so will let others more needy than myself post on your thread. I love ultraedit and use it primarily as a more powerful text editor (ie don't code with it or write html).

No problem, I didn't actually realize that they do lifetime licenses. Must have been a thing they did in the past?

[Darwin]

No, the lifetime licence is available, but it looks like you can only get it as an upgrade (I'm really not sure though). I bought a standard licence and then switched to the lifetime one after I realised that a couple of upgrades would cost more than the lifetime licence!

[mrainey]

I paid $62.95 back in May to upgrade to a lifetime license.  This after being a UE user for close to ten years.

Looks like a straight lifetime license is $124.95.

[cybernetnews]

No, the lifetime licence is available, but it looks like you can only get it as an upgrade (I'm really not sure though). I bought a standard licence and then switched to the lifetime one after I realised that a couple of upgrades would cost more than the lifetime licence!

Ahhh, I just saw the upgrade option and assumed that they no longer offered the lifetime license. I think I'll be picking one of those up in a few days.

And a question I get asked ALL the time is whether I get a free license for software reviews like this. Nope, I normally don't. Any paid software that I review I've normally purchased myself. In the case of UltraEdit I was still in the trial mode.

[cybernetnews]

I paid $62.95 back in May to upgrade to a lifetime license.  This after being a UE user for close to ten years.

Looks like a straight lifetime license is $124.95.

Hey, wait! I just looked up the prices you mentioned and they are indeed right. The funny thing is that you can purchase the application for $49.95, and then buy the lifetime license for $62.95 = $112.90! You can save about $12 by not purchasing the lifetime license upfront. That's kinda funny.

[Darwin]

Yeah, and that's exactly what I did! No flies on me!

[mwb1100]

The funny thing is that you can purchase the application for $49.95, and then buy the lifetime license for $62.95 = $112.90! You can save about $12 by not purchasing the lifetime license upfront. That's kinda funny.

Not to mention that you can wait for a year to pay the $62.95 (I suppose there's the risk that they'll raise the price in the meantime).

[zridling]

Michael Rainey is the UltraEdit god! Every time I try to wean myself from UE, it pulls me back! It allows ALL the customizations I want/need to make to a text editor. Bought a lifetime license years ago, but hate that I have to contact IDM, submit all my license/order info, and then wait for them to allow me to upgrade to the next major version. As a licensed lifetime user, THEY should be contacting me!

[mrainey]

Zaine,

There's an Austrian guy on the IDM forum, goes by the name of Mofi, who has pretty much taken on the user-to-user support function as a solo act.  Judging by the depth of his answers, I'd say he's averaging several hours every day doing unpaid research and writing for the benefit of UltraEdit users.  I've pretty much become a bystander over there, and that's fine.  I'm not nearly as generous with my time as Mofi is with his.

[destiny_ruler]

I have used UE for some time and needless to say that it is very feature rich. It performs most of the activities which I would like to have in a general purpose editor. But having said that, I would say that I have met many people who dont have such a sophisticated requirement and normall are lost with UE. So, they have the options for something like notepad++(free) , PSPad(free), Emeditor(free for students) etc. They dont have as much features as UE but still they are used because most of them dont cost anything and are packed with just enough to be needed.
It is just another way of looking at something being called best. Mercedes is something we all may agree to call best but again, not all of us need it.

[Ralf Maximus]

For me, the defining feature of UE is the "column mode" (ALT-C).  This one capability is what made me buy it oh, so many years ago.

Oh, and the integrated hex editor.

[mwang]

Same here: Column mode and hex editing are the reasons I've kept Ultraedit on my computer. For everything else, I've gone to EmEditor, which is much faster, and has much better scripting support. Ultraedit's macro capability is inadequate, IMO, though I believe it's progressed since v9, the last version I have a license for.

Now with Emeditor doing half-decent column editing, and various other ways to view files in hex mode (I rarely need hex "editing" anyway), I'm using Ultraedit less and less.

Emeditor is far from perfect. For me, however, its deficiency isn't big enough to justify the cost of another editor.

[zridling]

Thanks mrainey, Mofi is great there on the UltraEdit forum. mwang, I really love EmEditor and the upcoming version 7 is really going to be special, and perhaps for the first time, compete with UltraEdit's feature set.

[mwang]

I'm afraid I'm not as enthusiastic about the upcoming v7 of EmEditor as you do, Zaine. Took a peek of the planned features list a while back and didn't see the thing I wanted the most -- full column editing capability. Don't have time to check out the betas at the moment, though, so I'd be happy to be surprised.

[alweisenborn]

I too own a lifetime license so there is no need to make me a winner. I have been using UltraEdit almost since its beginning. It is bar-none the best text editor out there. It gets a great workout as a IDE for the NSIS Installer. It provides a complete environment for NSIS including:

• syntax highlighting
• compile
• run
• review compiler output
• access NIS help

I also use it as a general purpose editor for perl, php, html, etc. As another user mentioned, the column mode is a life saver when needed. On particularly nice feature is the conversion function that lets you convert from DOS format to Unix format. Sorting of lines and summing of columns is handy too. I highly recommend this software.


One should also take a look at UltraCompare, it is a great tool for looking at the differences between files.

[Jibz]

Posting in a 2 year old thread makes that look far less like a commercial .

Disclaimer: I'm old and cynical .

[wraith808]

And to think, because of the necro-posting, I almost necro-posted to a 2 year old comment thread to win an UE license...  have to be more careful about looking at dates...