Sunday, March 18, 2007

In praise of Babytype

My favourite new utility is Babytype, which makes your computer into a wonderful baby-proof activity centre - every key pressed pops up an image and makes an entertaining noise, rather than sending emails to employers and old flames or reformatting the hard disk.

The only flaw was that I kept having to dive across the sitting room to start Babytype whenever Johnny approached the keyboard, which he can now just reach. So I asked Raize software if it could be turned into a screensaver, and got the following helpful answer:

First, you need to go to the directory where you installed BabyType. The default location is "C:\Program Files\Raize\BabyType." In this directory, you will find several files. One of the files is named "BabyType.exe".
Select the BabyType.exe and then select the Edit|Copy menu item. The select the Edit|Paste menu item. This will create a copy of the file which will be named: "Copy of BabyType.exe".
Next, select the File|Rename menu item and change the name to: BabyType.scr
Then finally, select the File|Install menu item and Windows will install the program as a screen saver.

I would like to say that this works perfectly, that the sitting room PC is now goes into Babytype after 5 minutes without use, and that the reply was sent on Saturday night, which is pretty damn impressive for a product that currently costs a mere $19.

Great product, great attitude. Thanks!

2 comments:

rhizome said...

My first thought reading about this was "What a great idea", but on reflection, doesn't it just encourage Johnny to make a beeline for your keyboard?

Francis said...

The simple answer is that he needs no encouragement. In fact he finds typing rubbish into real windows even more exciting than Babytype, alas.

What do you do about Jake? Is it just a matter of investing in some higher, deeper tables?