Your Handwriting 2

by Data Becker

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00005JSGP
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 30, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,034 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #74 in Software > Graphics > Home Publishing > Fonts
  • #82 in Software > Education & Reference > Writing & Literature
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Data Becker's Your Handwriting 2 lets you turn your handwriting into a personal font. Instead of selecting Arial or Times New Roman from the drop-down menu, you can introduce a more personal touch to your letters with your very own font.

Before you rush out and get this program, though, you need to make sure that your computer is up to the task. The program requires at least a Pentium 133 and 32 MB RAM. In addition, you will require at least an SVGA graphic card with a minimum of 64,000 colors and a resolution of 800 x 600. You'll also need a scanner.

If your computer meets the specifications, you can get started by filling out forms in your own handwriting so they can be scanned. The editor tool lets you change the character size or modify a character's shape; for example, you can adjust the character's width. Keep in mind that if you use different types of pens at the scanning stage you'll have a greater variety of styles to work with later.

The advantages to this program are that you can, for example, sign letters by using your computer (although the usefulness of this isn't clear unless you will be sending the document electronically). More practical uses are thank you letters, invitations, address labels, and greeting cards.

Your Handwriting 2 allows you to successfully computer-generate your own handwriting in an instant, and will bring a warmer, more personal feel to your text. --Justin Hunt

Amazon.com Product Description

Your Handwriting 2 turns your handwriting into a personal font that allows you to add a unique and thoughtful touch to e-mail, print correspondence, and other documents. It's fast and simple to make as many different fonts as you like. The font analyzer instantly turns your messy handwriting into a neat, personalized font. Simply fill in four letters of the alphabet using the enclosed forms, scan, and watch as your handwriting is transformed into a TrueType font. Use the font editor to alter or improve the look of the font. You can preview at any time to see the results. Start personalizing letters, desktops, invitations, reports, proposals, memos, and more. You can even create an e-mail in your font and send it as a JPG attachment.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars C_Dilla spyware/copyright protection ? NOOO THANK YOU !, November 2, 2003

By 

EnglishTeacher "scubabear" (EnglishSpeakingCountry) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Handwriting 2 (CD-ROM)

If I had known in advance that this program contains CDilla spyware / malware, I would not have bought it. I ordered the product already... but I guarantee it will make a quick trip to the trash-bin UNOPENED.

Many thanks to the reviewer who recently pointed out, this program contains CDilla.

For those of you who don't know what CDilla is:
It's spyware, which means it reports across the internet to let the mfr. know if you're making extra copies. It's also malware, because it interferes with your CD copying... not just preventing certain copyrighted CDs from being copied (OK, OK) but also just plain preventing your CD burner from copying random CDs properly...whether there's a legitimate reason for preventing that copy or not.

CDilla sets itself up on an undeclared, self-created partition on your hard disk. Yes, that means it goes in and changes your partition table !!! For some users, that's going to be a real problems, because monkeying with the partition table is NOT a good idea...particularly if you have several partitions, dedicated to several flavors of operating system (Windows and Linux, for example... with a LiLo-type partition to provide you with a boot-time menu so you can choose which operating system to boot).
Here's a quote from extremetech.com's site, one of many articles about C-Dilla, particularly C-Dilla on Intuit's TurboTax software. (Intuit-TurboTax's version of C-Dilla wasn't different from any other version of C-Dilla, just got alot of attention because TurboTax *was* very popular software until C-Dilla became a part of it.)
From the article:
"Likely the biggest problem users have expressed, is the level at which the TurboTax licensing agreement is managed and protected with the SafeCast/C-Dilla technology. People believe C-Dilla infiltrates their system in a very insidious manner, and uses memory and resources even when TurboTax is not loaded. And some believe it has caused them serious compatibility problems with non-related CD writing operations. (PC Magazine and ExtremeTech will be conducting some tests next week to see if we can duplicate some of these problems). [....] or your customers still looking to exit TurboTax for good, the uninstaller at this link now fully removes components of SafeCast/C-Dilla that were previously mostly impossible to remove."

You can use the search engine at extremetech.com to find this article and related C-Dilla articles, and the very interesting discussions about C-Dilla, what it does, why folks dislike it intensely, etc. etc.

In short, C-Dilla is an extremely strong reason for any PC user to avoid this product. Buy something else instead. If you're planning on using this product at work, forget it... your Info Technology manager will have a cow if he/she knows that you're installing destructive trojan/spyware (C-Dilla) on the company PCs. If you've already installed this software on a PC at work, let your IT manager know IMMEDIATELY, so he/she can take steps to remove it. (Indications are, though, that it's extremely difficult to remove, and many uninstall programs do NOT remove C-Dilla properly.)

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Works as advertised, but..., September 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Your Handwriting 2 (CD-ROM)

Data Becker has created a fine product that actually does what it says it does. Based on samples on ones handwriting, it creates a TrueType font suitable for use in any documents created on a Windows or other TT-compatible computer. I have downgraded the product, however, because it's copy-protected. Not just copy-protected, but using C-Dilla, one of the more obnoxious copy-protection schemes in existence. Of course, there is no mention of that until the install routine actually installs C-Dilla on the PC, after which it's a major nightmare removing the "curse" should one desire to later. I don't have a problem with software publishers protecting their property, but this is major overkill for a $20 program. Had I known ahead of time that C-Dilla was used, I'd never have bought it, despite its excellent performance.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Easy and FUN!, June 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Your Handwriting 2 (CD-ROM)

The software is very easy to use. It does work best if you use a fountain pen. Ballpoint pens are not recommened. Felt tip pens can give you letters that are too large, or blurry, which will require a lot of etrxa time to edit after they are scanned. I've created a few different fonts very quickly. It does take a while to get it just right, but, it is very easy to fix the letters and characters to get them just the way you want them.

One other thing. The box says that you need a flat-bed scanner. This may not be true for all circumstances. I have a sheet-fed scanner cartrige, (IS-32), for my Cannon s400 printer. The proof sheet scanned into the program, using the cartridge, just fine. I used the OCR setting in the scanner driver. Sending an e-mail attachment with the text in the personalized font was very easy. The whole thing works like a charm.

I ran the program on a computer with a 1.2 G Celeron processor, running WIN XP with 256 RAM.