About Pleco

Our Story

Pleco Software was founded in May of 2000 by Michael Love. Michael had spent most of the year living and studying in China, and having a rather poor memory he found it extremely difficult to expand his vocabulary in Chinese, particularly since every time he forgot a word it would take him several minutes to look it up in a traditional paper-based Chinese dictionary. Inspired by a device he saw in a market in Zhongguancun, he threw together a makeshift Chinese-English dictionary on his Palm IIIx, using an off-the-shelf Chinese OS and handwriting recognizer and the free CEDICT dictionary. When some of his fellow students started buying their own Palms just to run this little hack of his, he realized there might be a good business move here, and thanks to some forward-thinking people at Oxford and Motorola he soon managed to secure the necessary licenses for Pleco's first product, Oxford™ Concise English & Chinese Dictionary for Palm OS®.

The Name

We pronounce it with a long E, like plee-co, which means we should probably type it with a macron (but that just looks silly). It's the nickname of a type of aquarium catfish (scientific name Hypostomus plecostomus) that Michael had several of when he was a kid, a stylized member of which graces our company logo. We think it's actually supposed to be pronounced pleck-o but he's been saying it the other way since he was 10 and he's not changing it now.

Contact Information

We aren't big enough to have anyone around to answer our phones just yet, but you can contact us by e-mail at the addresses below:

Sales and Purchasing Inquiries: sales@pleco.com

Customer Service and Technical Support:  support@pleco.com

General comments or suggestions:  feedback@pleco.com

Spam and other privacy-related complaints:  abuse@pleco.com

Legal or business matters:  mikelove@pleco.com