+1 for PhraseExpress. What a nice program!

I try to put my experience with Activewords together with *facts* (rather than marketing bloat):

* Software size – Activewords is the bulkiest of all tested text replacement utilities. For example, Auto Hotkey takes less than a 10th of size. Even the most powerful alternative Phrase Express only takes a 3rd of Activewords file size.

* Outdated engine – Without approval, Activewords ruins your fresh Windows 7 computer by installing an outdated Visual C++ 2005 library on your modern operating system. That is not what I like to see on my new computer.

* Cluttered user interface – There is no main desk in Activewords. Everything is cluttered with several windows. You have a separate window with a list of your entries, a separate window to search, a separate window to add items, etc. There are many mouse-miles to go for your cursor. It is just not state of the art.

* Intrusiveness – The Activewords popups stops your typing and occupies your desktop. If a suggestion is opened by Activewords, your work is interrupted until you close the extra window. This is better in Phrase Express: Phrase Express opens unintrusive small popup menu on the cursor tip that automatically disappear if you ignore them. You can just continue to enter text and your input is not blocked.

* Usability – if you forget the cryptic abbreviations, you are lost. You easily miss a trigger word if you not permanently look onto the Windows 95 styled ActiveWords bar. This is distracting. Again, I prefer the Phrase Express way: It has a certain grace period if you enter an ‘Autotext’. Even if you hit other keys you can still accept and let the Autotext execute the associated commands.

* Features – I learned, that Phrase Express is so much more powerful that it is difficult to put it in a blog comment. Let’s take formatted text. Let’s take, that Phrase Express can store pictures (such as a hand-written signature that is associated to a trigger word ‘sig’). Let’s take the powerful macro language that is much easier to learn than Visual Basic as in ActiveWords. Let’s take the Clipboard Manager that keeps a record of your previous clipboard items. Let’s take the feature that you can arrange your phrases in categories and define, that certain categories of phrases are limited to certain programs. E.g., abbreviations for html code snippets are recognized just in DreamWeaver only while any email text stuff is recognized in Outlook. Phrase Express is a feature monster. And it is still easy to use.

* Reliability – Activewords apparently is a quite dated application. The copyright label says 2009 but the software seems to be from 1997. The design, the usability flaws and the stability proves that. I tested it on Vista (yuck) and again, later on Windows 7 but it caused a few crashes that made me reluctant to keep it on my computer and to invest my time to build up a library.

Last but not least there is ONE particular, absolutely astonishing feature that is just amazing in Phrase Express: Its capability to learn new contents automatically without any need to manually create a library of commands and phrases. There is nothing you need to configure. Nothing you need to setup. You install Phrase Express and forget about it. It will learn what you type and recognizes if you type things multiple times. After a while, it will start to suggest to auto-complete things for you. It’s precision of the text suggestions ‘out-of-nowhere’ really impressed me. There was Letmetype in the early days but it could only learn single words. Phrase Express does this magic with complete sentences.

I strongly suggest to give Phrase Express a try.

Frank

P.S.: If you just need a very basic text replacement utility, try ‘Texter’ (discontinued).

Recently, I noticed that ActiveWords was delivering 30% of my content via substitution over the past 6 months. Who wouldn’t want to work 30% less?

I must admit that it took a couple of tries to ‘get’ ActiveWords at first and really start to integrate it into my life, but once I did — it became an irreplaceable tool. While it would make sense for Microsoft to buy them, I would hope they would be able to keep it running so well (Anyone remember fondly and miss Lookout?).

After 3 years of using ActiveWords, I’ve created the “5 phases of AW”:

1. Curiosity — What’s ActiveWords?
2. Skepticism — I don’t really need it.
3. Acceptance — Boy how did I live without it?
4. Dependency — Loathing the use a computer that doesn’t have AW installed.
Advanced Stage 4 is when you can’t stand it when your own AW DB’s get out of sync on your own other computers (or isn’t available on your Mac).
5. Annoyance — Irritated by watching anyone else who won’t ‘get on board and see the light’ struggle inefficiently with repetitive tasks. Similar to sitting next to someone who can’t type and miserably hunts and pecks all day. The inefficiency of co-workers who could be so helped by AWS drives you crazy.

I’m in Stage 5 and think the $50 I’ve spent on AW some of the best money I’ve ever spent to invest in my personal/professional productivity.

PhraseExpress is a new one for me – thanks for the tip.

I would also love to use something like Dropbox to keep my ActiveWords in sync. The backup process is easy but I’d prefer to not have to worry about it.

thanks for your comment

sb

I’ve talked to Buzz about ActiveWords for Mac – it’s a common request for sure.

thanks for your comment,

sb

thanks for your comment

sb