I was rebutting the author of the quoted article.

I would never suggest that declining popularity is reason alone to avoid a project. Merely that the DIY approach is aligned against the trends in scale and pricing.

In a word: No.

There are solutions that can be coerced into performing the same functions, but are so cumbersome to use that, for my purposes, they are not usable.

To set up a macro with my keyboard, I press the Macro key to enter macro mode, I press the key in which to store the macro, I type the macro, then press the Macro key to end recording. That's three keystrokes in addition to the macro itself. To run the macro, I press whatever key I used to store the macro.

The solutions I have seen involve taking the mouse to click an icon that starts the macro creation program, wait while the macro screen comes up, type in the name of the macro and what directory you wish to save it in, type the macro, save the macro, then exit the macro creation program. To run the macro, call up the macro program, scroll through a list of saved macros, select the one you want to run, then run it and finally exit the macro program. It just isn't the sort of thing I would bother with to, for instance, add a short text string to six selected cells in an Excel spreadsheet.

tanstaafl.

Which keyboard do you use? I use the macro function on my keyboard fairly frequently, and they released a USB version as an upgrade to the original PS/2 version quite some time ago.

Looking at previous posts, it looks like it's the Gateway Anykey. I'm assuming that this keyboard stores the macro in hardware, which appears to be a difference between it and the current macro keyboards that I'm able to find on Amazon, which seem to indicate that they still require software to be installed on the computer in order for macros to function. I don't know if this is a distinction that matters in practice. The other difference is it seems that all current keyboards that tout macro capability are hideous gaming keyboards that look like they have terrible ergonomics.

Mine stores the macros on the hardware, but I wasn't about to suggest it. We know how open to change Doug is

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage-for-pc-mac/

Doug might find 48 macros of up to 56 characters to be too paltry for his needs anyway, considering this post.

A lot of a-la-carte motherboards still sport PS/2 jacks. Not so many name brand computers do. But there are PS2/USB dongles out there for $10 or so that will allow full use of your beloved Anykey board with any mobo.

Cheers