From TNPC issue #4.20...

Pocket-Sized Software: Part 2

by Al Gordon
October 5, 2001

In addition to Office-oriented applications, the Pocket PC software world offers a wide range of utilities and other productivity software. Two items fell into the "must have" category. (Note: all the links for these products are available on Al's supplemental page; that link appears at the end of this article. -- Ed.)

-- Peacemaker Pro by Conduits Technologies, Inc., $14.95. One of the key features of handhelds has always been transferring files from one unit to another via infrared "beaming." Then Conduits developed Peacemaker. You can beam to a Palm from your Pocket PC and also receive data back. Files, notes, contacts, calendar items, all neatly reconfigured to the demands of the respective units. For example, because Pocket Outlook contacts have more fields than Palm Address book listings, Peacemaker automatically trims the Outlook data to fit into the Palm. So now if you have a Pocket PC you can share an intimate beaming moment with your Palm counterparts.

-- HandyZIP from CNetX, $19.95. The product is exactly what it sounds like: it will create or open compressed archive files in the standard zip format. This allows you to move a zip archive over to your Pocket PC as is, and open it on the handheld as needed. Compressing files in a zip is particularly valuable for conserving space on your handheld's precious built-in RAM. The interface is easy to use, very much the Pocket PC equivalent of the ubiquitous WinZip, and zip files will be associated with the program in Pocket PC's File Explorer.

Other key items for the Pocket PC user's shopping list included:

-- Flash Format 2.0, $14.95, also from CNetX, which allows you to check and format and verify all ATA compliant storage cards, including PCMCIA memory cards, Compact Flash Cards, Multimedia Cards, and MicroDrives. It will provide detailed storage and file statistics (including FAT Type, slack space, heads, cylinders, sectors, clusters, etc.), verify card integrity, and detect and repair allocation errors. A key feature is its ability to format cards in FAT32 (default in Pocket PC is FAT16) with its smaller cluster size. Since Pocket PCs inherently deal in small-sized files, slack space can mount up; especially, as a CNetX spokesman reminded me, given the availability of large-capacity storage cards and disk drives. Flash Format also can create a backup FAT and create an AutoRun capability to provide that a specific file will run when you insert a particular card (e.g., start up a graphics viewer on a card that has picture files).

-- Code City's CityTime, $14.95. I first came across this application when it was bundled into Handspring Visors. It tracks time in four cities besides your own, gives sunrises and sunsets, moon phases, travel distances, computes time differentials, and generally makes life easier for people whose work and friendships cross time zones and international datelines. One of the key features of CityTime is that its interface has a world map with areas of day and night marked. Tap on a location, and the time for that place pops up. It was an interesting feature in black and white, and looks exceptionally cool in color. CityTime's strength is that it brings information to you in a way that takes advantage of the handheld platform.

-- The Applian Super Incredible Bundle, $49.85, is a good buy for Pocket PC users, as the price gets you its PicturePerfect 5.1 graphics software and CoolCalc enhanced calculator, which are $19.95 each by themselves. The bundle adds in a reminder, "Virtual Wallet" (it stores drivers license, credit card, or bank account numbers and like personal information with password protection), a dialer program that uses the PDA's speaker to generate dialing tones, a file encryption program, and a few games.

CoolCalc provides a wide range of advanced calculator functions-- financial, scientific, loans, currency converter, tip calculator, metric converter, date and time calculators. A nice convenience.

Picture Perfect allows you to sensibly organize photos on your Pocket PC. You build collections of images as slide shows to display on the handheld. The software allows you to set transition effects, timings between slides, "smart" full-screen views (automatically adjusting for portrait or landscape orientation), sound effects, and text notes. It also performs lossless JPEG transformations, such as rotation or flipping, on an image.

-- Timekeeper, $9.95, another offering from Conduit, is a nicely designed stopwatch program with "skins" to optimize it for purposes ranging from timing a race to cooking an egg.

-- Pocket PCs ship with a handheld applet for--surprise!-- Microsoft Money. Pocket Quicken exists only in the Palm universe. However, Keep Track from Ilium Software is a well-featured application to, ahem, keep track of your trips to the ATM, credit card purchases, and the like. It will import and export to the .qif format, which both Quicken and Money use for data exchange. The interface makes use of programmable buttons for common transactions and for inputting numbers, to achieve the all- important goal of minimizing the number of stylus strokes you must make. It's $19.95, plus $10 for the Desktop Keep Track module to synchronize, print and back up your transactions.

-- Primer from Ansyr Technology, $79.95, is a heavy duty Adobe Acrobat .pdf file reader for the Pocket PC. And I do mean .pdf reader--it opens and displays actual Acrobat files in their original form, as opposed to the number of programs on the Palm platform that convert the .pdf into a simplified format. This is not for the casual user looking to skim product brochures. Primer is intended for business users who want to make key documents-- instruction manuals, handbooks, organizational guides, and the like--on Pocket PCs. Company spokespeople say they see training and reference documents as a key market, as this will allow workers to check through key materials in the field.

-- And let's not forget to have a little fun: Microsoft Entertainment PocketPak brings the mission-critical applications of Freecell, Blackjack, Chess, Cinco, Hearts, Minesweeper, Reversi, Sink The Ships, Space Defense, and Taipei to the Pocket PC. The bundle is $29.95, or buy individual games for $9.95 each.

Click here to read Part 1 of this article series:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/420/tr.cgi?al1

Click here to see all of my supplemental material related to this article, including links for all the aforementioned products:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/420/tr.cgi?al2

You can reach Al Gordon at:
mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com

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