Starting VisKeeper for the first time presents you with a pretty thorough “introduction”. It is shown as a series of notes stored in the program – not at all a bad idea.

VisKeeper generally adheres to the “template-and-object” design. According to SFR, they had it first – but it was made really popular by SPB Wallet. It defines that you first create a template specifying the fields needed:

And then fill in the fields in order to create an entry.

Entries can be arranged into folders, and text notes can be stored everywhere:

A very basic search tool is also included:

One of the most impressive features of VisKeeper it its ‘image password’ – a tap sequence on an image of choice can be used in Vislieu of a password:

Unfortunately, you must activate the password manager manually. If it is not “armed”, everybody can access your stored password by following the tutorial sequence.

Another thing which made me angry is that the program forces you to use the UI in the language set up in the Prefs. As I use an Austrian locale, this means that I am stuck with German – other programs allow you to choose the language in a more flexible fashion.

This review looked at VisKeeper version 3.2.2 on an XPERIA X1 running its stock distribution of Windows Mobile 6.1. The program needs 1228KB of memory and can be installed onto an external memory card.

In the end, VisKeeper is an extremely useful password manager once you wrap your head around some of its peculiarities. Being forced to activate the password manually is stupid – other than that, there’s little not to like. The price of 10$ for the stand-alone and 20$ for the PC-enabled versions is humane.

WebIS’s flagship product is centered across two views – one of the two is the folder list. It shows all ‘accounts’ on the handset:

Clicking on a folder lets you look at the emails. A Outlook-style preview panel is available for easy viewing:

When opening an email, the sender data is not shown immediately – you have to scroll up for the full scoop:

FlexMail might not be too flexible when it comes to formatting outgoing email. However, it allows for a variety of quoting styles and can even manage and request (!!!) read receipts:

Background downloading of emails is a non-issue. The program presents itself pretty chatty and makes extensive use of notifications:

Power users will be delighted to hear about the multi-window capabilities of the program. They allow you to edit one email and look at another one ‘at the same time’.

Version 4.1 added threaded SMS support:

While this is not bad on its own, it blocks access to the default SMS/MMS tool via the start menu:

For future versions, webIS must definitely overhaul the contact management – if I enter an email address once, I want it cached…even if it isn’t in the address book. Furthermore, the program still crashes from time to time (approx 1 in 1000 emails, device restart required) – this is unavoidable for a HTML renderer, but should be minimized.

This review looked at version 4.10 of FlexMail on an XPERIA X1 running its stock version of Windows Mobile. Memory usage starts out at 5MB, and then depends on the number and size of emails downloaded. Running FlexMail from a memory card is possible, even though RAM installs tend to deliver more speed.

In the end, my delay at writing this review can and should be the best possible endorsement for the program. It has managed my email without one outage for the last year – if you own an IMAP server, throw the 10$ on the table NOW. You would be stupid not to…

All of this is nice and dandy when you are in a club – but when it comes to a panel for the today screen, lean is king. Can HandyWeather stack up?

Starting HandyWeather for the first time pushes you through an introduction wizard, which helps you set up the basics:

Picking a city works well, but is slow due to the annoying animations:

Once the wizard is gone, you find yourself confronted with the following screen:

Tapping around on icons and the menu then lets you access a variety of other options including a detailed 24h “weather radar view”:

The real reason most users install a program like HandyWeather is its today plug-in. HandyWeather’s plugin is lean, and can be customized comfortably to take up comparatively little space:

As for customization, the product generally goes a long way – you can modify everything except for the highly annoying animated transitions:

Unfortunately, Paragon had to add an extra craplet to the launcher:

This review looked at version 4.00 of HandyWeather on an XPERIA X1 running its stock version of Windows Mobile 6.1. The program needs about 3800KB of memory and can be installed into RAM or onto an external memory card.

Turn it around and around, but HandyWeather always remains about 2MB less fat than its competitors. Of course, it also is less flashy – but is very close to an ideal no-frills weather software. If Paragon would allow users to disable the flashy animations, eliminate the annoying icon and would clear up the GUI a bit, we had a clear winner here. As it stands now, the price of 17$ is insane…

RCM consists of multiple modules which are integrated into a folder of the programs folder:

The program furthermore attaches itself to the ’start call’ key of your handset. While the screen may look a bit overwhelming at first glance, it is extremely useful – you can enter both numbers and contacts easily (in a T9esque fashion):

BTW: the little SMS icon allows you to SMS a contact directly…

RCM displays detailed statistics for each contact – you can easily find out whom you called when and how long you talked:

Resco Contact Manager furthermore acts as a threaded SMS viewer:

The real strength of RCM is its ability to handle contacts with associated photos. Once a photo is associated with a contact, the product displays it whenever the contact is referenced:

Unfortunately, the folks at Resco’s could not resist the urge to create a today plugin. It uses an obscene amount of space and IMHO offers little value, as it can not be configured:

This review looked at version 1.10 of Resco Contact Manager on a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. RCM needs 1917KB of memory and can be installed onto an external memory card.

In the end, Resco Contact Manager can likely save you quite a few clicks. If the boys at Resco’s would add a graphical contact chooser like the one found in UltimatePhone for Palm OS and add a few small tweaks(like displaying the currently active network), RCM would be a total must have. As it stands now, the price of 25$ is too steep…but keeping an eye on it is a great idea…

Our first contender is SPB’s Insight. The product displays a settings wizard while being installed, and contains a today plug-in:

Channels can be added to Insight easily. SPB has chosen to store the list of feeds online: while this requires you to download a catalog every time you wish to use the built-in list, it also makes sure that all channels advertised actually exist:

Once your channels are in the list, updating them is easy:

Feeds can even be displayed while being updated – SPB apparently dislikes waiting as much as I do:

The rendering quality of the product is good (read: Pocket IE). To cut a long story short: all my test feeds rendered well, embedded images were displayed.

This review looked at version of SPB Insight on an XPERIA X1. The product needs 2276KB of memory and can be installed onto an external memory card.

In the end, SPB Insight is a good reader with a lethal flaw: it does not allow you to bookmark articles for later processing. If you can live with this omission, take the trial of this program for a spin. If not, stay tuned for the next program!

SPB Weather supports literally thousands of cities – picking the right one is straightforward:

Unfortunately, rather little information is displayed about the individual places – other products display more:

One of the most impressive features of SPB Weather is its 3D globe view, which can be used to display various parameters. Unfortunately, it is of little use as the program jumps from city to city like a rabbit on steroids…

SPB Weather can integrate itself into the today screen. This plugin is excellent – the screens below show a few of the millions of possible configurations:

SPB Weather has various options – it unfortunately seems to miss a command which disables self-updating while roaming:

Various data sources can be used to supply the data used – as the default source has served me well so far, I saw little reason to change it:

This review looked at version 2.0 of the program on an XPERIA X1 running its stock WM 6.1 ROM without added GL drivers of any sort. It needs about 10MB of memory and can be installed onto an external memory card.

Like many other PocketPC programs, SPB Weather unfortunately got “iPhoneitis”. It is loaded with weird transitions and non-standard UI widgets to the point of obscenity…I have opened the main program two times on my rather fast X1 and closed it immediately due to lag and disgust. The today plug-in, on the other hand, is excellent – my main eeker is that 16 USD (after my rebate) is a bit steep.

If SPB would offer the plug-in as a standalone, it would get rave reviews here. As the package currently stands, I feel that better offers are available…

In the last installations of our StyleTap review, we looked at what StyleTap could do. This part focuses on something entirely different…how fast is StyleTap compared to a real handheld?

Palm OS handheld speeds usually get measured via Speedy, which is a very popular(and fast…30secs max per test) benchmark that gives pretty accurate data. At the first glance, my 400MhZ ipaq is about as fast as a classic 144MhZ Tungsten T:

However, comparing the benchmark details shows that the ipaq is much slower Graphics-wise, while it beats the TT hands down in memory and CPU-related tests:

PalmPi reports a calculation time of just seconds, which is a record value never ever seen before on a Palm OS handheld. Our sister site TamsPalm has loads of PalmPi results – visit them there for further comparison!

Accessing SD cards is really fast. The values below are much higher than the ones the memory card scored in real Palm handhelds – apparently, the ipaq’s highspeed SD card subsystem speeds up VfsMark to new heights.

Overall, StyleTap’s emulator window could be the fastest Palm OS handheld ever – if it didn’t have the huge bottleneck in the graphics routines. As already shown in previous parts of the review, games suffer badly from this. Nevertheless, StyleTap is more than fast enough for productivity applications…

PhatNotes for WMS
PhatNotes WMS for Outlook

From day one, handheld computers were intended to store textual data : the very first handhelds actually were clamshell devices like Atari’s now-famous Portfolio. Thus, a plethora of text processing apps was created – while some of them just concentrated on editing, other applications also deployed their own storage formats. PhatWare’s PhatNotes is of the second variety…but can it stack up?

After starting the program for the first time, a plethora of Windows pops up. The window on the left shows the available container files, the window at the top contains the notes and the window at the bottom contains a preview. While this layout may work well on VGA screens, my rx4240’s QVGA screen can’t really handle it:

Notes can be formatted:

Voice samples can be attached too notes with relative ease. Users of PhatPad can even embed hand-written doodles…unfortunately, there’s no way to do that without PhatPad (which costs an additional 40$ – a pricing policy I personally consider outrageous):

Alarms can be assigned to notes, too:

Notes can be “colorized” in a fashion similar to Microsoft’s Outlook – this makes finding individual notes easier:

A context analyzer tool detects numbers and email addresses automatically:

A plug-in for the Today screen allows you to access recently-edited notes quickly:

Unfortunately, the program does not allow you to export all notes to industry-standard formats like txt or doc. However, individual notes can be exported to txt and rtf when opened:

Screen rotation works very well:

This review looked at version 5.3 of PhatNotes on a hp ipaq rx4240 running Windows Mobile 5.0. The program needs 1434KB of memory and works well from an external memory card!

In the end, PhatNotes is a well-programmed application that unfortunately adheres to a concept will be swept away by the sands of time. As storage cards become bigger and bigger, the overhead of storing individual text files becomes negligible (and offers higher security in case of data corruption). Leaving the issues outlined above aside, the program offers everything needed to manage rich-text notes – if you can live with the idea of database files, give this (very expensive – 40$) app a spin!

In case you wonder about how this looks – the image below shows the program working in default mode. Whenever you press one of the keys, the bubble containing the magnification is popped up:

The product includes a variety of layouts that can be chosen with th key on the left – the images below show English, numeric and German modes:

A menu can be opened to configure various aspects of the program:

Last but not least, ZoomBoard has a variety of different zoom modes:

This review looked at version 2.0 of the program on a hp ipaq rx4240 running Windows Mobile 5. The program automatically installs itself into the RAM when the cab is launched – no information about the file size is given(and the program cannot be installed onto an external memory card).

In the end, ZoomBoard succeeds in taking Apple’s thumb keyboard system one step further – here, the zoom view really helps when it comes to hitting characters. In case the concept outlined above sounds attractive to you, try out the free trial and purchase this 15$ app in the TamsShop if you like it…

P.S. The text in the screenshots is a short story written by Dr. Kohrs of abc texte. A big thank you goes out to her for permitting us to use it as sample!

After installing Resco Keyboard Pro, the application immediately launches a small “setup wizard”. This wizard asks you a few questions in order to determine how you will use the application:

Version 5.0’s most-advertised new feature is called iSkin – a “fullscreen” keyboard that emulates the one found on an iPhone/iPod touch. Resco’s implementation is very faithful and works well, although typing can get a bit hard on the rx4240’s tiny screen:

The keyboard does an excellent job at adjusting to landscape mode:

By the way – Resco’s nifty baby calculator also made it iSkin – this is a feature that Apple didn’t implement into their devices as of now(I can hear someone in Cupertino firing up the copying machines):

As for the other layouts, they are rather plain and do not really adjust to landscape mode:

However, their gesture mode(can also be enabled for iSkin) is a real timesaver. Instead of forcing you to enter commas and spaces by tapping an extra key; gestures allow you to determine the next character by keeping the pen down after pressing a key and pulling it along the screen in a specified direction:

This review looked at a prerelease version of Resco Keyboard Pro 5.0 on a hp ipaq rx4240. The program needs 920KB of memory and can be installed onto a memory card without any issues.

Cutting a long story short: people who like to use the standard PocketPC keyboard will definitely love Resco Keyboard Pro as its gestures save loads of time. People looking for a real full-screen keyboard face a little dilemma: real fullscreen keyboard applications have bigger keys; but cover up the screen. Luckily, a free trial of Resco Keyboard Pro is available from Resco’s web page – head over and see if it saves you 20$ worth of time!