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Startly Technologies QuicKeys X3 is one of those old, indispensable Mac productivity enhancers. With QuicKeys, you can map one key to do nearly everything, such as start a program, copy files to an external hard disk or launch a chain of events, such as starting Apple iTunes with your favorite playlist loaded.
QuicKeys X3 is now more powerful and sports an improved interface that shows you all the hotkeys in one massive list. You can even drag and drop steps between shortcuts. New macro programming functions such as Wait and Decision allow industrious Mac users to create more powerful programlaunching Triggers. For example, you can create a hotkey that won't start until an application comes to the front. New Text Tools are handy for document clean-ups—with a single keypress, you can eliminate every extra double-space, for example. The utility also supports Speech functions, so you can start an event by saying a phrase into a microphone.
Unfortunately, the most powerful functions in QuicKeys—those that allow you to create a long string of repetitive tasks—may seem much less attractive to Mac users once OS X Tiger ships this year. The new Apple Automator application in Tiger uses a similarly intuitive approach to stringing together tasks, allowing you to create "workflows" such as renaming files, adding files to an Apple iPod and then ejecting the device, or even starting a DVD movie and an Apple iTunes track at the same time. Automator is highly integrated, so it will work with Apple's new Spotlight searching feature, and uses an elegant and intuitive interface.
Still, QuicKeys X3 is a great upgrade, and worth serious consideration, especially if you're not planning to upgrade to Tiger right away.
–JOHN BRANDON
QuicKeys X3: 
Startly Technologies | www.quickeys.com | 800-523-7638 | $100
Pros: More powerful Trigger commands, more intuitive interface.
Cons: Includes task automation features similar to those in OS X Tiger.
Requires: OS 10.3 or higher, G3/G4 CPU 350MHz or faster
macHOME recommends: 700MHz or faster
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