The technology is properly known as "swipe," not "Swype." Swype is copyrighted.
Looking forward to trying Shapewriter, but it's been sold to a company called Nuance, a great move for both companies, as Nuance is a leader in the field. However, Shapewriter has been removed from the market temporarily during the changeover. We'll see how that goes.
I've used Swype and SlideIT extensively. Of the two, I much prefer SlideIT. Swype seems to have gotten carried away with possibilities. SlideIT just works smoothly, and doesn't have the little quirks. However, it's not quite as tolerant of sloppy swiping, and it doesn't automatically save new words. Auto-save is a mixed blessing in Swype's case, though, because it's what causes the program to slow down as it gets used more. One of the things they're working on while it's in beta.
The paid version of SlideIT is not available in the market for rooted phones. The dev is working on setting up an alternate download site so that us geeks can pay for it if we want to. The biggest difference between the paid and free versions is the ability to get the dictionary to permanently remember words (free expires after 30 mins., enough to allow you to use recurring words in one or two messages or docs, but it doesn't stay permanently). There are a couple of other advantages, which escape me at the moment.
Slide Keyboard: great for hunt-and-peck typists, but it will drive a touch typist crazy. Don't even bother if you can touch type on a full-size keyboard. It's totally counter to all the reflexes you've built over the years. Stick with the board you're used to. I uninstalled it after about five minutes. A clever solution to a non-existent problem.
I've also been using a keyboard called SwiftKey (beta) that's available on the market. It has the best text prediction that I've ever seen -- by far -- and is kick-a** when used with the physical keyboard -- extremely fast. If that prediction engine were combined with SlideIT, the combo would be unbeatable. It's worth trying it out just to see how really well-integrated software works. One big flaw is that the graphics on the keys are thin lines and too small. The superscript is useless, and the whole keyboard sucks for older eyes like mine. If they fix that, I'll buy it no matter what they charge.
I think if you find an app useful and use it a lot, you should be happy to pay for it if the option exists, to keep the developer in the game if for no other reason. As to price, how much is unreasonable for something you use all the time? $15 US comes out to about 4 cents a day, or a tiny fraction of a cent per use, for most users.
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