Review: PhraseExpress v5 |
In my current position, I deal with a lot of repetitious situations and over the years I found myself writing the same sentences over and over and over again. I found myself thinking that someone must have had the same idea; and they did. So I did some searches and I landed on a program/application called PhraseExpress.
PhraseExpress allows you to capture/store snippets of information that are phrases that you’ll repeat all the time. It stores text as well as pictures, and mixed text with images. So if you process new orders, handle customer service or do tech support. You can save yourself a ton of time and go with something like this…
If you have ever used a word processor your probably familiar with AUTOTEXT. This neat little feature allows you to type a few letters and then have a paragraph of information appear. If you like this, but want to expand it to every application, then this program is going be very useful to you.
Now PhraseExpress is free for personal use, but the author of this program kinda keeps track of what your doing via the program, so if the program thinks you might be using the program for other than personal use it’ll remind you. Now, on the website it says it’s free, but no one likes being accused of being a thief when their not; that’s why I don’t like his NAG screens. Free is Free, and if you feel otherwise, you should simply limit the program to 20 different items. If the customer likes it that much, they will pay the $30.
As useful as this program is, the one thing I look for is a self sustained program, a program that’s portable; placed on a jumpdrive and take it anywhere. This program doesn’t have this, but the author says it’ll be coming soon. I think this is a must for a program like this.
The program is nicely rounded with a auto-learn feature, clipboard manager and the ability to do some macro functions… and more.
Most of the time I post stuff that’s freeware, but this is note worthy.
Work smarter; not harder…
Regards,
NapoleonAG
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Thank you for reviewing PhraseExpress.
We are sorry that you are not happy with the way we offer PhraseExpress and we would like to better explain our offering:
> Now, on the website it says it’s free
PhraseExpress is free for *personal* use. We certainly do not hide this policy:
*It is clearly described in detail at http://www.phraseexpress.com/freeware.htm
* “Register for commercial use†is clearly displayed in the user interface. It stares right at your face!
> but the author of this program
> kinda keeps track of what your doing
> via the program
It is very important to clarify that it is not *us* keeping track but only the *program* itself. There is no information transmitted over the internet!
The commercial use detection compares any stored phrase against a built-in(!) list of words usually only used in commercial endeavors. This is solely done within the software.
You hopefully agree that commercial use may be understandably suspected if words such as ‘invoice’ are stored in PhraseExpress. And it must not be one or two trigger word. The detection threshold is rather very modest.
> if you feel otherwise, you should simply
> limit the program to 20 different items
Many users do not like the feature limitation “Crippleware†approach. We rather want to offer the full-blown PhraseExpress experience without any feature limitation.
We believe that our method to distinguish personal from commercial users by the phrase contents is a fair deal.
The general problem with software today is that many users believe that software is somehow free in general because Google Earth is free, FireFox is free, etc. However, they all have a business model backing up their investment.
We are a small company and invested several man-years into a program which you actually seem to like. However, unless our developers can live from air alone we depend on the honest support by users who take a financial benefit of the productivity increase generated by PhraseExpress.
It is correct that false alarms happened in earlier versions of PhraseExpress but as you probably experienced, the commercial use popup window is very decent and invites you to contact us if you suspect a false alarm.
Additionally, since the improved version 5.1.37 we have not received a single complaint anymore.
If you believe that PhraseExpress still inappropriately detected commercial use in your case, please send your phrase file over to us and we will gladly check it for you: http://contact.phraseexpress.com
Last but not least: This is all free. You gave us nothing and we provide a free product and free service for you. But you may not totally forget the little fact that everything has to be financed somehow.
If you still do not like the concept, we would really appreciate any realistic suggestion to make it better.
Michael
http://www.phraseexpress.com
Michael,
Thanks for your comments. I find your program excessively useful and I do like it very much; I am a registered user (2x). My review was to present the pros and the cons of the program.
As mentioned, I don’t normally go shareware, but since the program is so useful I felt a need to review and present it.
Again, thanks for your comments and please keep up the good work!
Regards,
NapoleonAG
We have now implemented a nice option which allows users to use PhraseExpress for commercial endeavours without paying for the license.
Please visit:
http://www.phraseexpress.com/freeware.htm#trialpay
(See bottom of that page)
I hope you like it.
Michael
http://www.phraseexpress.com
I’m a self proclaimed techie, I use PE at work. I get more done with PE than I care to explain.
I think your idea is great, pushing it in the corporate world- more people should use this; especially where they’re dealing with somewhat repetitve questions, order processing, customer support, tech support, FAQ responses and common typing corrections.
My most inventive way to use PE; I’m not a nice person by email, so I’ve PE identify certain phrases and I’ve the program go back and change those phrases to be more diplomatic and fluffy for sensitive people to handle better.
PE- You rock…
Keep up the good work Michael!
Regards,
NapoleonAG