First off I am not affiliated with Holdkey. They have a .eu URL which is unfamiliar to me, I guess it's European Union, but I'm more familiar with .co.uk as a TLD. Anyway, I was shopping for a laptop a year ago, and I got an Asus laptop, and a big part of my decision was the number key. I use a lot of ALT codes, like 0151 for em dash, 0150 for en dash, 0162 for cents, 0163 for pounds Sterling, 0176 for degrees, 0223 for the German, um, this thing ß, and so on. I use a lot of these daily and I need a computer that will let me type them. I incorrectly assumed Macs, which do not come with a number pad, simply couldn't do it. I later learned that, like a smartphone, you just hold the key and bam, there's your symbol.
So I Googled it, and all signs pointed to a systray hidden tool called HoldKey that does pretty much exactly what I want. The free version does all I need, but I wanted to pay the guy, and he only asks for $5 USD, which I thought was fair. I will have to learn what letters do what, because it's literally only letters, but they make sense. My dashes are under D, so if I hold D for a second and release, I get a popup with 10 symbols. The em dash is 3. So hold D, then 3. Easier than hold ALT, 0151.
The only catch is, you can't back up the license. $5 gets you three. So if you were to reinstall Windows, that's another license, it's not the same one. And in his FAQ he says, "Well it's only $5 to get three more" or something like that. It's kind of lazy but he kind of has a point. If I hit that issue, I may pay him again, or I might just stick with the free version. As I said, it's enough. So if you're considering a reformat/reinstall of Windows any time soon, don't register a pro version just yet.
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dragontology
First off I am not affiliated with Holdkey. They have a .eu URL which is unfamiliar to me, I guess it's European Union, but I'm more familiar with .co.uk as a TLD. Anyway, I was shopping for a laptop a year ago, and I got an Asus laptop, and a big part of my decision was the number key. I use a lot of ALT codes, like 0151 for em dash, 0150 for en dash, 0162 for cents, 0163 for pounds Sterling, 0176 for degrees, 0223 for the German, um, this thing ß, and so on. I use a lot of these daily and I need a computer that will let me type them. I incorrectly assumed Macs, which do not come with a number pad, simply couldn't do it. I later learned that, like a smartphone, you just hold the key and bam, there's your symbol.
So I Googled it, and all signs pointed to a systray hidden tool called HoldKey that does pretty much exactly what I want. The free version does all I need, but I wanted to pay the guy, and he only asks for $5 USD, which I thought was fair. I will have to learn what letters do what, because it's literally only letters, but they make sense. My dashes are under D, so if I hold D for a second and release, I get a popup with 10 symbols. The em dash is 3. So hold D, then 3. Easier than hold ALT, 0151.
The only catch is, you can't back up the license. $5 gets you three. So if you were to reinstall Windows, that's another license, it's not the same one. And in his FAQ he says, "Well it's only $5 to get three more" or something like that. It's kind of lazy but he kind of has a point. If I hit that issue, I may pay him again, or I might just stick with the free version. As I said, it's enough. So if you're considering a reformat/reinstall of Windows any time soon, don't register a pro version just yet.
Anyway, just thought I'd pass it along.
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