I realize that this is not the forum for such a debate, but prema23, I think you are missing the point here.

GOTD has worked with the vendor to give you the software for free--forever. Sure no updates or support in general, but for you, it's free. That's why it is the GIVEAWAY of the Day.

The concept is for you to try to and see what you think. Give feedback to the vendor, something, other than just talk about alternatives.

It seems highly unlikely that the vendor is not already aware of the alternatives, but feels like s/he has a good product to offer.

As for pricing:

1) Please remember that shareware is not supposed to be free. You are supposed to offer the developer something if you like it.

2) If you look at the vendor's website, the software is $29.99, but if you download the trial version, the website says it offers a 50% discount. Consequently, even if you had to pay for it, which you don't from GOTD, it's only $15.

I do not see anything wrong with noting and posting alternatives to the GOTD offer, but I think it should be incumbent on the person posting to either make a side-by-side comparison or to be sure to note that they did not try it out.

I'm also not saying that all GOTD software is a bargain if you bought it. In fact, I do not normally NEED any of the free stuff I download. But it's interesting to try out, make use of once or twice, and give feedback about.

For GOTD, I also suggest there be two voting systems--one for people who have seen the offer and are not interested in it and one that you get after a couple of days where you can provide feedback about its utility. Right now, I'm only the second comment, but there already many votes, presumably about level of interest than anything.

Thanks. And sorry if this is a mis-placed counter-argument.

Barry  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+105)

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#1 prema23
It seems you don't even have bothered to install and try the program. Since when can anyone review by copy repeat whats in the program information and judge from outsie by comparing it with programs that have nothing to do with what this one does? Isn't fair and doesn't help anyone.
Same quality are these 30 thumbs down ratings after 10 minutes, probably all those who either don't understand what the software does or who simply say "can't use it".
Anyway. I have installed and tested and I can say that I love it.
Coincidently I have just looked since 2 days for something like that. And yes, I have Rocket Dock and Object Dock (always on desktop) which I love, and they have a nice look, and I have also Launchy. Comparing them with Superlauncher is like comparing Photoshop with Firefox - no relation. Superlauncher is not for creating visible icon shortcuts, but lists them in a little menu and can assign hotkeys to each (if comparing, its a bit like Auto Hotkey, but much easier). And there is much more.
The strength of this cute little tool lies in the all in one combination:

Pros
- You can assign different kinds of shortcuts, not only to applications, but also for example to shutdown/restart, recent documents, recycle bin, control panel and much more.
- Shortcuts are only the start. You can assign hotkeys to each shortcut.
- You can group shortcuts, for example if you have a tasks that needs 4 different applications, you can group them and open them all with only one hotkey.
- You can schedule tasks (great for automated backups).
- You can use the scheduler as reminder for anything, with text message poppong up.
- You can add text pieces that you type several times, to save typing, and assign a hotkey to it, to insert the text into any program.
- Program is recource friendly (uses only about 12 mb on my PC).
- You can let it run as autostart or not.
- You can choose to have it as little icon ot the desktop or more decent in the system tray.

Cons
So far I haven't found much. The only thing (as a recommendation to the developer) is, that the schdeuler could be improved. One can set date and time, repetition by minute, hour. But not weekly, week day, monthly (like every 1st of a month, every Monday etc.). Thats what I find is missing. If that could be improved, its a wonderful application. 5 stars from me.

I have been looking for such a tool, since I have a scheduler running, menues here and menues there, hotkeys, and now needed something that lets m create a list with textpieces, since I am a translator and have some manuals from the same company that have all the same texts for their terms. To not to type the same translation several times, I need that. So Superlauncher comes at the exact right time, and on top lets me put together all the other things (scheduler, hotkey etc.) in one application.
So, 10 thumbs up from me.

A real freeware alternative is Swizztool. Similar to Superlauncher its lets one create tasks and assign hotkeys, schedulue them, includes a memo and a hotkey for pasting text into it, reminder, and text pieces - however the textpieces are limited to 3 slots of extra clipboard.
Swizztool can be found here:
http://www.specop.se/index.php?action=swizztool

Many thanks to GAOT and PCWinSoft.

Sabine  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+97)

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Downloaded, installed and activated without issue on Win XP Pro SP2, Intel Centrino 1.6, 512MB ram (laptop).

Very straightforward and easy to use - created a keyboard shortcut to GOTD in about 5 seconds. Same goes for creating one to a folder I access constantly. All you do is drag the link/folder, etc. to the task menu icon (or you can float the icon on your desktop).

Have not tried #1's alternates because SuperLauncher is the Giveaway of the Day. Why don't you try it instead of promoting another website (which I also frequent) by spamming here?

Price may be a bit high for said application but that's subjective.

Thank you PCWinSoft and GOTD. Regards - Damian

rezidue  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+45)

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This is a rather nice hotkey launcher. Its NOT a program launcher except incidentally as a hotkey launcher. ctrl shift d (or whatever combo you desire) can be programmed to open up your browser to Wikipedia or a dictionary page for instance. Alternatively you can do a quick shutdown, restart, etc. if there is a pathway to it you can do it. You can also schedule programs, groups of programs, processes etc to open up at different times. There are freeware alternatives but this is an all in one that is free at giveaway of the day.

The program was so intuitive I didn't need the tutorial. (Ah, the tutorial may not render well against windows sidebar gadgets and the developer may want to look into that).

About the only thing I didn't see on this shortcut is mouse/macros though you can group processes by keyboard shortcuts.

It seems like many people aren't going to even try out this offering. Its not a bad program 'for free' (though I agree 30 dollars is too steep). 9.99 is a better pricepoint for what it is in my opinion. If you think you might want a nice keyboard shortcut program that shortcuts about anything and does it easily you might want to check the program out.

c1oudrs  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+41)

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I usually don't like to criticise the giveaway of the day, because even when I don't care for a particular giveaway, I appreciate the efforts being made for us. I have discovered some really cool and useful software here, some of which I've gone on to upgrade and/or recommend to friends.

With that said, I don't really see much benefit to this one. SuperLauncher seems to be in the same category as the freeware PowerPro (http://powerpro.webeddie.com) which I have been using happily for almost a decade now, except less functional.

With that much experience under my belt, I'm obviously going to be biased in favour of the tool I know so well. Still, I don't see anything in SuperLauncher that isn't in PowerPro, and there's a lot in PowerPro that SuperLauncher doesn't have (command lists, mouse action control, multiple desktops, clipboard extensions, window resizing, media support, and some others). In fact, the main criticism of Powerpro is that there are actually too many features, and people get overwhelmed by the complexity. I guess for people that are overwhelmed by PowerPro, SuperLauncher would be an alternative (the GUI is nice, and it's simpler to set up).

I disabled PowerPro and gave SuperLauncher a brief shot, but I saw no immediate benefit. It did some of what I wanted, but not all. The menus and prompts were more helpful than PowerPro for newbies, which was nice. In fact, SuperLauncher did some things with reminders that I hadn't considered, so I set up PowerPro to do the same thing. I'll see how useful it is :-)

To be clear, SuperLauncher certainly isn't crap, but there are better alternatives, I think. I don't think it would be worth $29, at least to me. But as a giveway, this might be useful to some people. I'd still recommend PowerPro over this, though.

Bill  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+31)

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