Speed up your writing with an autocompleter: Comfort typing

June 30th, 2009 by jose

May, 2007, we had a post on using an autocompleter to improve writing speed/save keystrokes. I recommended intellicomplete, even though it was abandonware even then.

Moving to more modern OSs (I’m running windows server 2008 64-bit), it simply didn’t work anymore. Plus it never worked well with Firefox or thunderbird. Anyway, I’ve found a much better replacement: Comfort type. It was hard to find, because reading the site, it’s not clear that it can do this kind of job. Looks like this feature is just one more for the author… which is quite impressive since it costs $20, half of what intellicomplete costed.

The main advantages over intellicomplete are:

  • Multi-language support. This is killer, you can switch quickly with a shortcut, and as it learns it places words in different dictionaries
  • It works on More OSs and applications.
  • It also gives typewriter-like auditive feedback, which somehow makes me write more. Subconsciously, my body knows that if you don’t get the typing sound, you must be doing something passive. It’s also helpful to let people on the phone with you know when you are typing (so they don’t think an intimidating silence just started)
  • It detects caret on more applications. Not very well on Tunderbird/Frefox, but better than anything else I’ve tried

The problems I can see right now are:

  • It doesn’t complete with tab; only numbers, or enter. Enter can be a bit of a pain. This doesn’t bother me much because my tab finger was getting too much work anyway.
  • Sometimes is not as fast as I’d like. When it completes a word, you can see it going back and retype what you wanted.
  • Sometimes it hangs, but resetting it works.

What is interesting about this application is that it replaces quite a few others. For me, it replaces: Keepass (or any Password Manager) because it has encryption, and Autohotkey (for some basic templates).

Important: it doesn’t work with java applications. Could be a deal breaker. It even works when I use skype.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Announcements, Software, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Speed up your writing with an autocompleter: Comfort typing”

  1. Payday Loans PANo Gravatar Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 5:31 am

    “Sometimes is not as fast as I’d like. When it completes a word, you can see it going back and retype what you wanted. Sometimes it hangs, but resetting it works”

    I would like to share my experience using the Intellicomplete. I experienced the same disadvantages as you listed in your blog — the bogging part and the way you have to retype what you wanted since it goes back after you’ve completed the word. I hope I’ll find one that will address these key issues.

  2. Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

    Have you tried options > Main properties > set high priority for comfort typing? That solves it for me.
    Unfortunately, there are some other glitches with oneNote. Word works fine.

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