Okay, Cheryl thanks so much for steering me to this forum. It is wonderful. Now I spend way to much time here reading previous posts and copying expansion abbrev in preparation of the time I buy one.

I am a Career Step student as you know, I've already figured out to make good money the best investment is a word expander. Now I need to know which one is the best. IT, Smartype, Shorthand, I'm sure there are others but these are the ones I've seen referred to the most often. I haven't check with Stedmans but IT will give a student discount and so does Shor hand so I want to make this purchase before I do my final, (which if I quit spending all my time in this forum) I plan to do in April.

I learned many years ago, you can be the best but your really not without the best tools. So tell me what your recommendation is.

Oh, yes, I'm running Windows XP Pro with Office Xp.

Beverly Coate

Well, one of the issues for you if you are still a student is that you don't know who you will be working for, and therefore you don't know what software you will be working in.

InstantText and ShortHand will work with most Windows programs, although I think IT may have an edge in the number of various companies' transcription software it will work in. Smartype, on the other hand, although an excellent expander, will only work in Word. So I would give that some consideration.

The choice between IT and SH tends to boil down to whether people can work with marker keys and a multiline advisory at the bottom of the screen or prefer something that expands on delimiters and has an onscreen box. SH will let you use numbers at the start of your shorts; IT won't. IT will compile a glossary of phrases from your documents that you can link through continuations; SH doesn't. SH makes it easy to configure "fill-in-the-blanks" phrases; it's a bit trickier to do that with IT. The feature comparison can go on and on. I believe SH has a free trial, and IT offers a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can do some experimenting before making your choice.

Well Tonk thanks for your input, though I think you should be selling used cars

Now explain what you just said the differences were. I need to know if I'm comparing a Chevy to a Ford or to a Mitsubishi.


Bev

To be honest, like everything else you need to know about MT, the only way to figure it out is to get in there and get your hands dirty. Both software sites have demos, FAQs, etc., to help you get a grasp on how they work and what features they offer. Follow the links, do some digging around on sites, ask lots of guestions, and give the two programs both a trial spin.

Shorthand for Windows

InstantText

Hi Beverly! Welcome to Productivity Talk! I can't add much to Sheila's reply other than you'll want to go to Jon Knowles' productivity site and click on the Expanders and Abbreviation Systems link to check out various expanders. Many sites have screen shots that will give you an idea of how the program works and you'll be able to compare some of the features in each.

Thank you very much for your input,

Looks like IT is the professional for the professionals on every list I've been to. I will tell I check with IT sales and found they give a $40.00 student discount. This can be very important information for some of us. I had already been in touch in Jon Knowles and he thought I would be happier with IT as well.

So now I must make enough to buy this software and Jon's lists. Giess I need to get back to work on the lessons.


Beverly

Well, IT is the expander I personally use, so I can't say that's a bad choice.

However, there are many people who just do not like the way IT works, and many of those people prefer Shorthand. There are some features in SH that I wish IT had. But, of course, if I were using SH, I would be saying that there were some features in IT that I wished SH had.

As I said, it's a matter of individual preference. The one thing that's certain is that buying a really excellent expander and learning to use it is one of the best things you can do for yourself as an MT. I do understand the budget question, of course! This is one investment that will pay back its purchase price many times over, though, so you're very wise to be budgeting to buy it at the earliest opportunity. And you are right, that information about the student discount is very important. I'm glad you came back and posted that.

Welcome to Productivity Talk, Beverly! We hope you find lots of useful information here.

Hi, Beverly! Thanks for coming to the board! Everything I would say has already been said, so I won't add anything. Either expander you get has great features, and it will be worthwhile to really delve into them all once you get it, to make the most use out of your expander.

Glad you mentioned those discounts, too.

Welcome to PT, Beverly!

I'm just going to throw one more thing out there for you to think about. You may end up working for a company that furnishes your computer and their program may come with an expander. I use Dictaphone's ExText and it has a built in expander called ESP. I'm not allowed to install ANYTHING on my work computer. So you may want to wait until after you've gotten your first job.

Carolyne and Tonks do speak an important truism on that last point.

I have found that Shorthand works with many more programs than IT, and
a number of companies who pay better than average have programs that will not work with either SmartType or IT.

Your information appears to be dated: At this stage, IT works with all platforms that I can think of. Note that we recently adapted IT to work with Vianeta, Emdat, Futurenet iType, and even DOS applications such as WP 5.1. Look at the Compatibility Section of the Instant Text forum and you will see references to these applicaations.

We are constantly adding new client applications and if you come across one that is not supported, please let us know.

There are a number of techniques to master when you are using an expander and that are easily transposable to other expanders. These techniques are easier to learn when at school than later on, when you are under the pressures of daily production.

For this reason, I think that Beverly is right in selecting and learning an expander right now. Think also that she will develop habits and her own glossary with which she is comfortable with. This glossary should be transposable to whatever platform she ends up working with.

Learning the MT profession also involves learning the set of techniques that make you efficient and these depend a lot on whether you use an expander or not. There are certainly notable differences between IT, SH, and ExText , but they pale in comparison with working without an expander.

I agree with Jean that an MT can't start developing an expansion system and glossary too early. If you pick an expander with global compatibility with Windows programs, such as InstantText or Shorthand, you will probably be able to use that choice working for most of the employers you might have in future. If you end up working for someone that allows only their proprietary expander to be used, you can at least transfer your system to that platform, and you can usually convert your existing glossaries as well.

Hi Carolyne, I just came across your post here.
I have been working with word autocorrect as my only expander for two weeks.
Next week I will be having ExText installed on my computer through work.
I will be working with EMRs from home, and the hospital's VPN is only compatible with:
Windows 2000
Word 2000
ExText
My questions for you are: With your experience with ExText, do you know if there is a way i can install IT or another expander, without it interfering with Extext? I am afraid of my computer freezing up. I thought maybe i could type into word using IT then cut and paste into Extext. But I don'tt think i want to do that extra work. OR do you have any suggestions for adding to ESP? I did use it for two weeks, during an internship, and didn'tt like it, and I noticed I couldn'tt use word autocorrect with it.
UGH I wish I didn'tt have to use Extext.

Please help

Hey, why can'tt I use an apostrophe tee?

Thank you.
jen

I'm vitally interested in hearing a response to this post, also. I've just accepted an offer with a company that uses Extext/ESP, and I have no experience with it. I have IT and would like to be able to use that, however it sure sounded like they didn't allow it. However, they did mention that I could install software with the aid of the tech people.

I'm looking forward to input from the experts.

Both of you might want to talk to tech support about just copying your IT .ini file to the C: drive and running it otherwise uninstalled from an external USB drive. If that is not allowed, you might consider trying Shorthand, which can be run completely uninstalled from an external drive and has a free trial you could use to see if it was compatible with your platform. See the threads here about running programs/expanders uninstalled.

If you can't use a USB drive, see if you can put Shorthand on a rewritable CD. It would probably be a bit of a pain to add entries that way, but at least you could have your expander available.

Sorry, I'm not going to be much help on this one. I'm not allowed to install anything on my work computer so I have no idea if IT would be compatible or not. I do know that AutoCorrect and ESP clashed so we had to turn the AutoCorrect off.

Jen -- I use SH with ExText with no problems. I use ESPs as well. You cannot have a SH entry and an ESP entry with the same name -- the SH entry will always come up rather than the ESP entry, but this is not a big problem. I think that after you have used ExText for a while you will like it better. (But then, that could just be because the platform I used before was just the most awful thing ever programmed...) I never asked about using IT with it because I use SH. Have you looked at the IT forum for information about this? ( http://www.fitaly.com/board/itmainforum/ )

happy friday everybody

Is it possible to install SH on a USB drive?

Thanks!

Using Shorthand without installing on company PC