Shareware welcomes users to a new world of PC opportunities
Although Microsoft Windows' decade-old graphical interface has made life easier for most users, anyone who could write a .bat file in MS-DOS still feels betrayed. One of Windows' shortcomings is that it won't let users cut and paste in advanced ways as they could in MS-DOS environments such as DesqView from Quarterdeck Corp. of Marina Del Rey, Calif.
Although Microsoft Windows decade-old graphical interface has made life easier One of Windows shortcomings is that it wont let users cut and paste in DesqView users could run macros and edit right inside the copy function. If you There is no good substitute in Windows. If youre tired of the limitations of With Notepad, you highlight some text and right-click to cut or copy. Any data left in That shortcoming also makes it difficult to store boilerplateaddresses, phone As for inserting boilerplate in modern word processors, the macros you design usually You can build a set of such messages in one or more Notepads saved to the desktop PC, Heres my solution. ClipMate 4.5, a $25 shareware utility from Thornsoft To paste from this archive, press Shift-Ctrl-Q and see a pop-up list of recently saved The savings in time and effort is enormous, but ClipMates usefulness doesnt For example, my permanent boilerplate file, although easy to edit, doesnt receive You can edit the title and content of each stored item, search for text, glue a number Many federal sites steer clear of shareware, supposedly because shrink-wrapped software But why is it better to pay hundreds of dollars per seat for a bloated 500M application The agency would have to designate a person to evaluate shareware and freeware, but Shareware supposedly has more limited support. But does it really? The Linux operating Power users who want to get the most out of their computers will like ClipMate. The Linux boom has proved that freeware isnt junk. Nor is a lot of shareware. Could shareware and freeware such as Linux put an end to user complaints about bloated Agencies that investigate stable, inexpensive freeware operating systems and popular How cost-effective is it for support staff to spend weeks learning software so they can John McCormick, a free-lance writer and computer consultant, has been working with
for most users, anyone who could write a .bat file in MS-DOS still feels betrayed.
advanced ways as they could in MS-DOS environments such as DesqView from Quarterdeck Corp.
of Marina Del Rey, Calif.
dont think this was important to them, you never had to copy information from
WordPerfect to a Lotus spreadsheet, inserting formatting codes on the fly.
having to cut and paste one item at a time through Windows Notepad, I recommend a
great utility called ClipMate.
Notepad will be lost. You cant easily copy lots of different items because you must
switch applications and paste each item immediately or lose it.
numbers, Web linksto add to e-mail messages.
wont work after an upgrade version arrives, so they have to be programmed again and
again.
but you still must search for the text, highlight it, then cut and paste.
Development of Rochester, N.Y., runs under Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0. It saves every
cut or copy result to the top or bottom of a queue, indexed by the first line of the copy.
No more losing every previous text block when a new one is copied.
text blocks. Double-click on the one to be pasted to the application in which youre
working.
stop there. Active users can quickly find hundreds of items in the ClipMate file, select
how many items to keep, and have them automatically deleted or managed in several ways.
copies of new material. The text stored in the boilerplate file isnt automatically
aged and deleted, either.
of separate items together and paste them all at once, print items, and generally manage
and move stored items between collections as well as change the active collection.
is easier to support.
that may have oodles of bugsoops, undocumented featuresthan to download a
30-day working demo and license it only if it works well?
someones already doing that for commercial programs, so whats the difference?
system, for example, isnt just shareware, its freeware. And Linux help is a
heck of a lot easier to find online than answers from major software publishers
technical support lines.
Its downloadable from the Web at http://tucows.accu-find.com
and http://www.thornsoft.com. The
first site indexes hundreds of quality shareware and freeware products.
Such programs are less upgrade-driven than big commercial programs. They dont need
as much support, dont suffer from as many new bugs and are generally simpler to
learn.
suites and the constant upgrade treadmill that holds down productivity for users and
support staff?
shareware utilities might find they can raise worker productivity at far lower cost. PCs
are still a very young office tool, and theres no reason to think Microsoft Corp.
operating systems and office suites will always represent the only business model.
explain things to users for six months before upgrading and starting all over again?
computers since the early 1960s. E-mail him at powerusr@penn.com.