Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

In forum post “Is it a Macro Recorder, is it an Automation Tool, or ….” Antonius asks how we can make Macro Scheduler more popular.  This is not the first time I’ve been asked this.

The easiest and quickest way to help is to Share.  At the top right of every page of the website are some “Social Sharing” buttons.  

Click on your favourite social networking site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter or Google+) to share www.mjtnet.com with your followers.  Click the +Share link to get a list of other places you can share to.

Or you can use this link here:

Clearly we’d LOVE it if you shared. All businesses, especially small ones, need new customers. But apart from that we want to build the user community for the benefit of everyone. More users means more forum peers, more product ideas and an even better Macro Scheduler. So, go on, get sharing 🙂

Thanks.

When you tell people about Macro Scheduler how do you describe it?  Do you call it an automation tool, a macro recorder, a script language, a data entry tool, an interface builder, a trained monkey, or something else altogether?

I’d be interested to know.

To me Macro Recorder suggests only a tiny part of its capabilities, but it’s a useful and popular term.

An automation tool sounds more encompassing but “automation” can mean different things to different people.

IBM and SAP use “automation” to refer to the interconnected nature of their Enterprise solutions, connecting data across the entire organisation. But to me – and Macro Scheduler – automation is something more robotic: automation of a more specific set of human activities.

This kind of automation requires a tool box containing many tools, one of which might be the macro recorder.

Does it matter? Not if you’re using it and benefiting from it, no, probably not.  But in getting the word out, explaining what it is to people and from a marketing point of view, it’s more tricky.

And that’s why I’m interested to know how you describe it.  I’ve started a poll over in the forums.  Please answer the poll or add a comment.

Thanks!

If you’re using an old version of Macro Scheduler, especially version 8 or lower, and like many others, you or your company are considering upgrading your Windows operating system to Vista or Windows 7 soon then you will need to consider upgrading Macro Scheduler too.

Windows 7 adoption rates are outpacing those of Vista fast and many companies are planning on going straight from XP to Windows 7. Already Windows 7 has over 15% market share with over 90 million licenses sold as of March 2nd.

Version 8 of Macro Scheduler was superseded before Windows Vista came along. And Vista brought with it some changes that required us to make changes to Macro Scheduler. So Macro Scheduler v9 was the first version that fully supported Vista. The latest version supports Vista and Windows 7 fully and is listed at Microsoft.com as a “Windows 7 Front Runner” application.

One of the things that Vista introduced were the thumbnail windows that appear when you hover over a task bar icon. These have the same title as the application’s main window. So in Macro Scheduler 8.0 and lower you will run into a problem where your SetFocus lines and other window functions find this thumbnail window before the main window and prevent your scripts from working properly.

Starting with Macro Scheduler 9.0 (in 2007) we made the window functions ignore these new thumbnail windows to prevent this problem. We also had to make some changes to the macro recorder. Older versions may not be able to record under Vista without running Macro Scheduler as admin.

So if you’re still running Macro Scheduler 8 or below then even if you have no plans to change your macros, you’re going to need a newer version when your operating system is upgraded to Windows 7.

Furthermore, we can’t support old versions forever and with the release of version 12 we will be discontinuing support for versions 8 and lower. Since version 9.0 was the first version that properly supported Vista and above we can only really continue to provide support for this version and onwards.

Version 12 offers even more Vista/7 functionality including a reliable AutoLogon mechanism that works in Vista/7/2008 to allow you to schedule macros to run even when Windows is locked or logged out.

So now is the time to upgrade. And if you buy or upgrade to v11 now, we’ll give you a free upgrade to v12 when it is released in a few weeks.

So there’s really no need to wait.

For a summary of new features in v12 click here and here.

The best way to upgrade is to log into your registered account and click the upgrade links. Any problems accessing your account email us.

Consider adding maintenance to your order as well. This will ensure you continue to get all future upgrades and new features automatically at no extra cost. Maintenance is the easiest way to ensure your software stays up to date with all the new Windows releases.

Take a look at the Macro Scheduler history list to see how many improvements there have been since version 8:
http://www.mjtnet.com/mswhatsnew.htm