Caleb's Opinion
Please Note: If you have a hard time finding one of these freeware apps,
please let me know and get it to
you.
Unfortunately freeware has a tendancy to vanish if one isn't careful
so i've got backups of everything. No, I won't send you retail software :)
I figured with all the time i've spent using pocket
pc's I'd dedicate a small space to the platform we're developing for.
I've
done a lot of testing of various software always looking for something that
will help improve the PPC experience.
I'm intollerant
of quirks and bugs so when that tends to be the case I do without or find
something better.
I now hoave the Sprint Mogul 6800 running WM 6.0 and really like it despite a few quirky things about it (like most pocket pc phones unfortinately).
I had the 6700 which was a great phone. I'm not looking back and thus forward the below software is based on the performance i've had with the Mogul.
I'm not plugging anything for profit, just think of
me as that guy you run into on the street and swap ideas and
suggestions with.
I'm open to hear about other products as well and certainly
am not an "authority" on windows mobile.
I'm just hoping this might help someone out there who tumbles cross our humble game web site. :)
Below are some programs that I have found to be "the
best" for what they do.
I've done a lot of hunting and searching to find some
of these apps that don't get enough attention and others that are well
known and diserve the popularity that they have.
This will grow over time, right now i just want to
focus on some free and useful apps that I found ideal for day to day usage
and will attempt to briefly explain why.
Freeware
Index
ICQ 1..0 Beta
Flash Player 7
Nefa Studio NS Canvas
RealOne Player
Scott Seligman's Launcher
Wei's Soft Reset and Fast Cleanup
TCPMP Core Pocket Media Player
Pocket Divx Encoder (PC App)
Xzeos Sotware XnView
ICQ 1..0 Beta
http://www.icq.com/download/ftp-pocketpc.html (verify)
It is what it is and does a great job. If you use ICQ
this is a great app to have.
I use it a lot and it works well.
It is fairly limited compared to the full version, but text and
stock quotes are well done.
No history or file sending but again, it is meant to be a lite interface to friends using ICQ.
Only issue i've had with it is be sure to disconnect properly at least once to insure the login info is saved.
if you just X out it won't save the longin info. It also isn't terribly persistant.
Meaning if you go to other apps you may find it closes without you exiting by choice.
Flash Player 7
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/pocketpc/2002.html (verify)
This is a great thing to have for web surfing.
It allows
me to watch homestar runner on
my phone andget to other flash web sites.
However because it's
version 7, it is not able to view all flash sites. It seems that newer sites
will say "you need a newer version" which
as of this writting is not available.
It's still good to have and it works great in landscape also.
Nefa Studio NS Canvas
http://nefastudio.net/cafe.cgi
Ok this is a tough one to sort through since it's in Japanese (of course not a problem if you know japanese :)
For those of you who need a little help like i did, click here to see download page. The top two are probably
what you'll want. QVGA is for most of us 320x240 users. This program does have a bug with WM 5.0 but it's
free and i just haven't bothered to report it yet. I never had trouble with older devices.
Ok so it's a fantastic drawing program. That's it. I've tried a number of retail products and found myself liking this
one better even though it's free. You can register it and buy it for $15 (a good deal) and you gain added features, but
the free one has no time limit or limitations like save/load. It has great features and yet, it has a simple enough interface
to get right into painting.
RealOne Player
http://www.realnetworks.com/industries/serviceproviders/mobile/products/player/ppc/
I've never been a big fan of real media, but this player is nice and works well. Some places use this as their
streaming method of choice so if you find yourself in that sutation (like me) it's nessisary. This player
does a good job streaming so I have nothing bad to say about it :) It's free and runs well.
Scott Seligman's Launcher
http://www.scottandmichelle.net/scott/cestuff.html
This is a great launcher program. It works well in landscape and portrait mode. He has other interesting apps on his site as well,
but this is the one out of all of those I feel is the most critical. There is a nice Conversion program here Screen toggle and PowerOff utility
here that I use, but wouldn't say are critical, but if you are looking for any of those apps they can be found on the link above and
do the job well.
Wei's Soft Reset and Fast Cleanup
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=14620
http://pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=14504
These two apps are awesome to have and are both highly recommended. The fast cleanup does a great job with all versions of
Windows Mobile. So cleaning programs I've used in the past would miss things and vary on OS. Also some are features of bigger programs
so you kinda have to have a bundle of software to have this feature. This is small and stand alone.
The soft reset is probably nothing special compared to other reset apps but it's small and does the trick.
TCPMP Core Pocket Media Player
http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download
This is a great universal media player, however with the advent of www.orb.com it's become somewhat obsolete for me.
I would use it to watch divx movies on my phone and it did a great job. Definately not my first choise as an MP3 player though
just because it would choke on me ever so slightly throughout some songs. This might have been a WM 5.0 issue, but regardless
there are better MP3 solutions out there. It does support playlists and such so overall it's a solid product but as a video player
it shines. There is a great freeware converter app that you should have as well if you have videos that are PC sized.
Pocket Divx Encoder (PC App)
This is a brilliant program that I highly recommend if you have a library of divx and pretty much any other video library
on your computer. There is an improved one that you can buy on this site for a whopping $5.95 which converts better
and faster. This is a great app that does batch processing and will take your bloated movie files of say 700+ mb down to
100-200mb's depending on quality. This makes a 1gig memory card go much further.
Xzeos Sotware XnView
http://www.freewareppc.com/graphics/xnviewpocket.shtml
This is a great picture viewer with lots of features. It's one of the best i've seen and it even supports less popular formats
like .pcx which is nice when taking screenshots in quake. :)
It supports file associations, slideshow, screen capture (how i took all these pics) and other great features. There is a retail
version available that I'm going to check out and see. I definately have a list of apps above that I plan on making donations too
because these products have made my experience with the pocket pc so much better.
Retail Products
Index
Conduits Pocket Player 2.7 (verify)
Conduits Pocket Player 2.7
http://www.conduits.com/ce/player/
This has to be by far the best overall MP3 player I
have seen yet. In fact i bought the program, and it's hard for anyone
to convince me to buy an application.
This, unlike most automatically refreshes your playlist. It also works flawlessly with internet radio and plays .MOD (amiga) files great.
Two other features that really sold me on it is the
crossfade feature which fades out one song and fades in the next one to create
a "DJ"
effect which is really neat. It also includes visualization.
They are very "winampish" which is nice.
Coming Soon for Retail Products...
Text Twist
Scrabble
Yahtzee
More...
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