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Textpander » TextExpander » 29.95

I love the Textpander (now TextExpander), but I'm trying to decide whether I love it enough to give up the 29.95 they're currently asking for it. What's that you say? What on earth is Text(ex)pander? It's this little utility that resides in your preference pane, waiting for you to type a key sequence. When you do type that key sequence (and sequence you decide on) it replaces it with whatever text you like. I like to put url stuff in there. All kinds of url stuff. For flickr posts. For comments. For links to my books. Etc. Here's an example. Say I comment on someone's picture at flickr. I type three letters, one of which is seldom used, and decided by me so they make sense, and Textpander gives me this: Terry Bain » author We Are the Cat (forthcoming August 29, 2006) » book | blog You Are a Dog » book | blog flickr sundries » You Are a Dog People | We Are the Cat People | Adoptable Pets | of books | LightPainting | iPhoto Mod | Flying Insects | Pyrotechnics | food pr0n Pretty cool. Or maybe I always always always misspell the word “apparatchik.” I just use my misspelling [“Condi” for instance] as the trigger for the proper spelling, and textpander corrects it for me. Used to be Textpander was donation ware, but then Smile on My Mac bought it, changed the name, and added a nice little fee to purchase. My old version of Textpander still works fine, but there are new features in the Smile version that I might want to consider. And I wonder if we place value on a product based on how useful it is, how much we use it, or how big and bloated it is. My guess is that we do the latter, because I'm hesitating, even though I use Text(ex)pander every darn day to simplify boilerplate text that I don't want to type over and over. I'm hesitating. The thing probably saves me an hour or more of work every day. It probably saves me a day of work a month. Why would I hesitate to pay 29.95 for it? Because it doesn't come in a big box, because it takes a few seconds to download instead of an hour and half, because it doesn't freeze up every thirty minutes, because it's handy and small and fits in my preference pane, because it's one of those things that should be included in the Mac OS but isn't, because I'm a cheapskate and my paypal account is running low. Maybe all of those things. I'm feeling petty. I like to support small, indy-type software, especially when it does something useful. That's why I dove in and made the purchase for NewsFire. Tell you what. You comment on this post. Tell me if I should buy the software. I'll take some comments and decide. And I'll let you know what I decide. Because it will like affect a lot of my decisions regarding software purchase. I count on you people. So say something. Even if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. I bet you have a piece of software you can't decide on. Tell me what it is and whether you paid for it or not. And thanks for your time. Blessings. » link Note: I just used Textpander to make that lovely little link above here. I type four little letters, and out comes all this lovely code that I don't even have to think about. How cool is that? Why would I not want to pay for that? Did I ask that question already? Listening to “Dancing Shoes” by Arctic Monkeys from the album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not on

Tags: 29.95 | donation | donationware | link | mac | pay | purchase | smileonmymac | software | textexpander | textexpander | textpander | textpander.

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