PhraseExpress vs Direct Access

[wraith808]

Bits Du Jour has PhraseExpress on special at $10 today.  Has anyone used this and DA?  Are they pretty much the same thing?

Thanks!

[Darwin]

Why not download PhraseExpress - it's FREE for home use today - the $10 is for a commercial license!

[Darwin]

PS PhraseExpress does look similar to DirectAccess. I'm downloading to try it out now.

[Ralf Maximus]

I like PhraseExpress, but (on my system) it caused some odd behavior.  I leave my PC running 24/7 and after 3 or 4 days systemwide keyboard response became sluggish.  Like, typing into any MS app with Intellisense caused insanely long delays.

During troubleshooting I removed PhraseExpress and the problem went away.  I was forced to conclude that was the culprit, though it might've been a conflict with AHK.  Since uninstalling PhraseExpress I haven't tried to narrow it down any further.

FWIW.

[mwb1100]

Why not download PhraseExpress - it's FREE for home use today - the $10 is for a commercial license!

I haven't tried PhraseExpress, yet.  I did come across one comment that indicated that the free, non-commercial, personal-use license had nag screens:

I've liked using PhraseExpress, after hearing about it on Lifehacker before, but I had a sad experience with v3: after using it for awhile, nag screens start to pop up every few times you execute a macro. I didn't see mention of this on the info-pages, so I was caught unaware by it, and I don't know whether it's a problem in v4. I hope not!

Does anyone know if free use results in nags?

[wraith808]

I'm at work, and just learned about it today, so can't really download to compare.  It's inevitable that I'll use it sometime that I'm making a profit, so I was just wondering if someone had used it.  Thanks for the responses!

[Darwin]

$10 is an attractive price - DirectAccess is $40. PhraseExpress is not as pretty and not as intuitive as Direct Access but it does seem to be very light on resources. I doubt I'll be switching to it (Honesty check: I'm no longer using ANY launcher, though I have quite a few installed) but I'll leave it installed and will play around with it.

[Darwin]

I *think* what you are reading about with respect to nag screens probably relate to a "commercial use suspected" pop-up that is discussed in this thread on the support forum. There's an older thread on the same topic here.

[sri]

I went from PE -> DA -> PE.

DA is prettier, easy to use. But it just gets unusable after heavy usage as it becomes slow.

PE is more powerful, fantastic on resources (very light weight), fast and w/ the release of PhraseExpress 5 Beta, it's a must have application.