Friday, March 21, 2014

Sogou pinyin - still the king

The pinyin in Windows 8.1 is much better than the one in XP, Vista and 7, finally the first usable MS pinyin after Windows 2000. However, it is too sluggish in Firefox and IE and it always crashes them on my Miix. I have no choice but, as always, go to Sogou 4.3 which is the only Chinese/English input method I can live with for many years now.


After Sogou 4.3 installation, you must replace two files, ImeUtil.exe and PinyinUp.exe, with dummy ones, otherwise it'll upgrade automatically to the new versions that suck. You also must disable the SogouIMEMgr in Task Scheduler.

If you use MS OfficeXP on Windows 7/8, Sogou 4.3 is not compatible to that combination. You ether upgrade your Office XP or, like what I do, use Windows 8.1's build-in pinyin just for OfficeXP. Switching between these two IMEs are very convenient with Win+Space.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing. May I know how Sogou 4.3 is better than its later versions? The current version of Sogou 6.8. I don't use any of the fancier features of Sogou Pinyin, so I am very interested in knowing why Sogou 4.3 might be a better choice. Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. I don't remember exactly what was wrong, but I did not like the later versions when I tried them years ago. I have not found any problem with the 4.3, except OfficeXP on Win7/8.

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  2. if I already updated to version newer than 4.3, should I uninstall it and reinstall 4.3 to get it right? Thanks.
    lrb

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as it does not give you any trouble, then don't downgrade.

      Delete
  3. How does it compare with google pinyin?

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    Replies
    1. Google is worse than spyware. Once you install any Google software on your computer, it will never have peace of mind again, extremely difficult to remove. That said, Google Pinyin is not bad as an IME, truly usable, but not any better than Sogou, less smooth (resource hog, use lots of memory and CPU).

      Delete
  4. How does it compare with Baidu Pinyin?

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