Media reviews

While working on your PC, you often do the same tasks every day, such as opening the same documents. Hot Keyboard Pro lets you create a macro to trigger these repetitive actions with a single keystroke. You can assign each macro its own hot key and schedule it to run automatically. Automated actions include opening a document, launching a program, and automatically replacing a string of symbols as you type in any Windows application. You can record and save a series of keystrokes and mouse movements and run several macros in a chain or call your own menu of macros. The program makes adding new commands a breeze. For example, you can highlight some text and press a hot key to create a new macro for any of the text-related action types. The program produced no noticeable slowdown on our PC. Also, Hot Keyboard Server lets several PCs share and exchange macros. The midrange features and ease of use make Hot Keyboard Pro suitable for power users and professionals who don't want to lay down big money for a corporate-level solution.

Hot Keyboard Pro lets you create macros in any program or across several of them. The program's setup wizard gives you a good start, helping you set up likely macros to launch favorite programs and insert common boilerplate text (such as your e-mail address). It even prints out a reference card. You can also create macros from scratch by recording keystrokes and mouse movements. I recommend using keystrokes whenever possible--they're more reliable.

Hot Keyboard Pro lets you create macros in any program or across several of them. The program's setup wizard gives you a good start, helping you set up likely macros to launch favorite programs and insert common boilerplate text (such as your e-mail address). It even prints out a reference card. You can also create macros from scratch by recording keystrokes and mouse movements. I recommend using keystrokes whenever possible--they're more reliable.