I used to use njstar word processor and it worked pretty well, you could write things using pinyin and it’d tell you the definition and the chinese character, but my trial period runs out and it’s pretty steep in price. Anyone know of a better alternative?
Dear Purerealm,
Even with the expiration of the trial period, the software still allows you to type Chinese and look up characters. It’s just the hover over character feature that’s disabled.
I know it’s unethical and someone with the handle Purerealm might be adverse to using an unregistered version but…
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
that hover over feature is so vital to my chinese acquisition though, if only i could figure out how to get around this… or scrape up some cash
Dear Purerealm,
I use two “get arounds”.
When typing using the Input Method Editor (IME) mode and are presented with a list of character or word choices, right-clicking on the choice will bring up the dictionary and if the character or word choice is included in the dictionary it will have the definition.
Note: some words don’t have definitions in the dictionary. Maybe the registered version is more complete.
Note: also some of the choices won’t be in the dictionary because they aren’t words per se. They might be sentence fragments that aid you in typing faster.
For instance, when I enter “wox” one of the choices presented is “我想”. If I right-click on it I get this:
A blank entry.
The second “get around” I use is if I want to look up a word I’ve already typed out.
I highlight the word or a character within the word and click on the “Hanzi Info” icon (the bold lower case letter “i” on the toolbar.
The Hanzi Info popups and then I click on the dictionary feature to get the definition.
For words that aren’t in the dictionary you could always add them yourself using the user-defined dictionary feature.
Hope this helps. 
Or if you’re really unscrupulous, you could get a version off the Internet with the copy-protection features disabled but which might have a virus attached.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Ha, well I was thinking that there must be some registry key or something the program left behind because when you reinstall the program it remembers that you still haven’t registered… I’ll admit I looked for the program online but I don’t think it’s popular enough to be posted as a torrent… or I’m looking in the wrong places
way too tedious to look up several chinese words phrases manually… I actually have a firefox addon that works pretty well by scrolling through words… gives you the definition on the spot, if you want I can give you the name when I get back home from taiwan, can’t remember off the top of my head
but good to know that you can actually look up words w/ unregistered =)
PM me and i’ll email u a copy. Don’t tell anyone.