Saturday, February 22, 2003
Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2 Reviewed
Posted by Sanjay Srikonda in "SOFTWARE" @ 04:00 AM
I wish I knew how much space was left on my CF card. I wish I could tell either by percentage or by time how much charge was left on my battery. I wish I had a way to shut down an app quickly. Ever wish for any of these things before? Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2 may be the answer you're looking for. Version 1.2.1 adds a few bug fixes, but the version reviewed here (1.2) is essentially the same as 1.2.1.
You ever sit there on the train and wonder how much browsing time you have left on your PPC? Or at the office and want to quickly check your Pocket PC while it's still in the cradle to see how much storage space is left without opening the Memory applet? How about adjust brightness or shut down a program quickly? You can do all that PLUS a whole lot more with Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2.
Everything and the kitchen sink
Everything you could want in one place is exactly what Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2 offers. A few of the features are:
Installing the Application
Can you say easy? Can you say, double-click setup.exe and away you go? This could be simpler to install, but then it'd already be on your PPC. Once I double-clicked the setup program, a simple install wizard was displayed. It guided me through the entire setup process, even though it really wasn't necessary to guide at all, the setup process was amazingly simple.
Using the Application
This is going to be a long section, folks, it has to be. With all the options and menus that are under the hood of this application, I was amazed I stopped tweaking how the application worked in the first place. I'll start with the main options menu (shown below) and go through each individual sub-menu for the four main parts of the options screens.
Figure 1: Main Options Screen
This is the main options screen. It shows you what you can control with Pocket Plus. As you can see, what's covered here are:
Figure 2: Close Button Options screen
As you can see from the image above, there are more options than I ever thought possible for a close button. You can choose to:
Figure 3: Programs to Minimize Options Screen
Repeating Alarms
Figure 4: Repeating Alarms Options Screen
Want more control over your repeating alarms than you possibly thought you could ever have? Well, here you go. This should make ANY control freak just about bubble over and... well, you get the idea about how much control those control freaks would have. There are so many options here I wonder if Spb didn't have a control freak programming this application. This is absolutely great. I loved being able to change so many things about the alarms. You can:
Figure 5: Repeating Alarms Advanced Options Screen
Choose Advanced settings:
Figure 6: Repeating Alarms: Settings Tab
Settings tab lets you:
Figure 7: Pocket Internet Explorer Options Screen
As you can see, not a lot of options here, but probably a really useful one for the screen real-estate on a PPC. You can choose to hide the menu bar so you can view IE with as much screen real estate as possible.
Today Plug-In options
Figure 8: Today Plug-In Options Screen
You can choose which applications appear in the Today Screen area where Pocket Plus runs. You can add as many programs as your heart desires. You can be as cluttered or as clutter-free as you like. For me, personally, I chose to let Pocket Plus just show the four main programs on my Today screen.
What can do from the Today screen?
Glad you asked. One of the most powerful aspects of the application is what you can do from your Today screen. If you tap the little icon to the left of running meters, it brings up the main options screen. If you tap and hold any of the default meters, you can choose even how those are shown as well as what type of information is shown: Tapping the Battery Meter brings up an options screen.
Figure 9: Battery Meter Options Screen
Figure 10: Memory Meter Options
Memory Meter
Figure 11: Storage Meter Options
Storage Meter
I have one major gotcha and a few minor ones. The major one is something that I seem to bring up with a lot of applications. Better written help. Since there are so many options here, there should really be better help. You're controlling a lot of the look and feel and a lot of how the program works while installed on your PPC, and as such, there really should be more help than is currently here. For example, I really had to wonder what the program meant (on first glance) in the Close Button options at the bottom of the options screen when it said, "Minimize program by gesture" or "Close program by gesture". Maybe it's just me but that really threw me for a bit until I sat down and figured out what the application was asking me to decide. To be completely fair, there was help available on the Spb site in PDF format but clearer explanations on the screen would have been very helpful.
The minor gotchas I have are that you can't use any other control type application while you have Pocket Plus running. Wisbar also has a close button at the top of the screen and the two do not like each other. Which, I guess makes sense, you're being asked to use one or the other and they're pretty much doing the same thing in different ways in terms of closing your applications. It just would have been nice to know that. I had a few technical issues with the application restarting my PPC without asking when I installed it initially, but that was just so the startup options could be set to run when the device started. It just threw me for a second to have my PPC restart for no apparent reason like it did.
Where to Buy
You can download a 15-day free trial of the program directly from Spb by clicking on the link on the Spb Pocket Plus page or from PocketGear for $9.95 (affiliate).
Specifications
The program was originally released on December 17th, 2002 and has been recently re-released (version 1.2.1) on February 21st, 2003. The total size on their Web site states that it's 245k, but that may be for the previous version. On my device, the total size needed according to ActiveSync's Add/Remove Program screen the total is 345.5k. The program runs on most PPCs. I think you can install it to a removable storage card, but this may cause problems if you don't have your card inserted when starting up your PPC because the program runs on start up.
Conclusions
The program performed well. It did exactly what it was meant to do and did it with an eye to control. Like I said before, any user who is a control freak will love using this. I can't remember a program meant to control so many different options and still be unobtrusive but display vital information graphically. Sure some people will say, there's Wisbar that does a lot of the same things, and I am an avid fan of Wisbar, but it's lacking when it comes to the graphical representations of system resources that Spb's Pocket Plus has. I like this program for what it does and how well it does it.
You ever sit there on the train and wonder how much browsing time you have left on your PPC? Or at the office and want to quickly check your Pocket PC while it's still in the cradle to see how much storage space is left without opening the Memory applet? How about adjust brightness or shut down a program quickly? You can do all that PLUS a whole lot more with Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2.
Everything and the kitchen sink
Everything you could want in one place is exactly what Spb's Pocket Plus 1.2 offers. A few of the features are:
- Ability to shut down applications with one tap, or just minimize the application
- View and change backlight settings right from the today screen
- Add repeating alarms with a lot of extra features not normally found on a PPC
- Full-screen Pocket Internet Explorer
Installing the Application
Can you say easy? Can you say, double-click setup.exe and away you go? This could be simpler to install, but then it'd already be on your PPC. Once I double-clicked the setup program, a simple install wizard was displayed. It guided me through the entire setup process, even though it really wasn't necessary to guide at all, the setup process was amazingly simple.
Using the Application
This is going to be a long section, folks, it has to be. With all the options and menus that are under the hood of this application, I was amazed I stopped tweaking how the application worked in the first place. I'll start with the main options menu (shown below) and go through each individual sub-menu for the four main parts of the options screens.
Figure 1: Main Options Screen
This is the main options screen. It shows you what you can control with Pocket Plus. As you can see, what's covered here are:
- Close Button
- Repeating Alarms
- Pocket Internet Explorer
- Today Plug-In
Figure 2: Close Button Options screen
As you can see from the image above, there are more options than I ever thought possible for a close button. You can choose to:
- Either minimize the program or close it by tapping the Close button
- Show any of the context menus when you tap the OK button on the top right of any screen:
Figure 3: Programs to Minimize Options Screen
- Show options so that you're taken back to the main Pocket Plus options menu
- Show a quick link to the "Today" screen to jump back there from anywhere
- Show a "Close All Inactive" option in the menu to close all inactive programs to free up memory with just one tap
- Programs to Minimize: Tapping on this takes you to a completely new sub-menu that lets you add as many programs as you'd like to the list of programs to always be minimized when you tap the minimize option (the only complaint I have about this option is that there's no way to go browsing for a program's executable file. You have to indicate it by knowing which one you want to include here)
Repeating Alarms
Figure 4: Repeating Alarms Options Screen
Want more control over your repeating alarms than you possibly thought you could ever have? Well, here you go. This should make ANY control freak just about bubble over and... well, you get the idea about how much control those control freaks would have. There are so many options here I wonder if Spb didn't have a control freak programming this application. This is absolutely great. I loved being able to change so many things about the alarms. You can:
- Choose
what alarm to play (by default there are too many alarm WAV files to count. A lot more than 10. - Choose to repeat the sound either at a steady volume, maximum sound volume from the first time, or ascending in volume from lowest to loudest. I chose the last option because it let me hear the alarm the first or second time without disturbing others around me in a meeting.
Figure 5: Repeating Alarms Advanced Options Screen
Choose Advanced settings:
- Play sounds continuously or play the sounds by series, which means that you can choose to have the alarm play continuously until you shut it off or respond to the alarm, or have it repeat a certain number of times, stop and start up again
Figure 6: Repeating Alarms: Settings Tab
Settings tab lets you:
- Use Repeating Alarms for Clock
- Use Repeating Alarms for Tasks
- Stop playing alarms when battery is at a certain percentage (This is useful. Especially if your battery life, like mine on my iPAQ 3850 really isn't that great)
Figure 7: Pocket Internet Explorer Options Screen
As you can see, not a lot of options here, but probably a really useful one for the screen real-estate on a PPC. You can choose to hide the menu bar so you can view IE with as much screen real estate as possible.
Today Plug-In options
Figure 8: Today Plug-In Options Screen
You can choose which applications appear in the Today Screen area where Pocket Plus runs. You can add as many programs as your heart desires. You can be as cluttered or as clutter-free as you like. For me, personally, I chose to let Pocket Plus just show the four main programs on my Today screen.
What can do from the Today screen?
Glad you asked. One of the most powerful aspects of the application is what you can do from your Today screen. If you tap the little icon to the left of running meters, it brings up the main options screen. If you tap and hold any of the default meters, you can choose even how those are shown as well as what type of information is shown: Tapping the Battery Meter brings up an options screen.
Figure 9: Battery Meter Options Screen
- Use a statistical estimate of battery life
- Use fixed battery lifetime
Figure 10: Memory Meter Options
Memory Meter
- Free Program Memory
- Free Storage
- Total Free
Figure 11: Storage Meter Options
Storage Meter
- Show the iPAQ File Store available space
- Show Slot 2 available space (if you have one installed)
- Show either free or used space
I have one major gotcha and a few minor ones. The major one is something that I seem to bring up with a lot of applications. Better written help. Since there are so many options here, there should really be better help. You're controlling a lot of the look and feel and a lot of how the program works while installed on your PPC, and as such, there really should be more help than is currently here. For example, I really had to wonder what the program meant (on first glance) in the Close Button options at the bottom of the options screen when it said, "Minimize program by gesture" or "Close program by gesture". Maybe it's just me but that really threw me for a bit until I sat down and figured out what the application was asking me to decide. To be completely fair, there was help available on the Spb site in PDF format but clearer explanations on the screen would have been very helpful.
The minor gotchas I have are that you can't use any other control type application while you have Pocket Plus running. Wisbar also has a close button at the top of the screen and the two do not like each other. Which, I guess makes sense, you're being asked to use one or the other and they're pretty much doing the same thing in different ways in terms of closing your applications. It just would have been nice to know that. I had a few technical issues with the application restarting my PPC without asking when I installed it initially, but that was just so the startup options could be set to run when the device started. It just threw me for a second to have my PPC restart for no apparent reason like it did.
Where to Buy
You can download a 15-day free trial of the program directly from Spb by clicking on the link on the Spb Pocket Plus page or from PocketGear for $9.95 (affiliate).
Specifications
The program was originally released on December 17th, 2002 and has been recently re-released (version 1.2.1) on February 21st, 2003. The total size on their Web site states that it's 245k, but that may be for the previous version. On my device, the total size needed according to ActiveSync's Add/Remove Program screen the total is 345.5k. The program runs on most PPCs. I think you can install it to a removable storage card, but this may cause problems if you don't have your card inserted when starting up your PPC because the program runs on start up.
Conclusions
The program performed well. It did exactly what it was meant to do and did it with an eye to control. Like I said before, any user who is a control freak will love using this. I can't remember a program meant to control so many different options and still be unobtrusive but display vital information graphically. Sure some people will say, there's Wisbar that does a lot of the same things, and I am an avid fan of Wisbar, but it's lacking when it comes to the graphical representations of system resources that Spb's Pocket Plus has. I like this program for what it does and how well it does it.
