Pocket PC Hints and Must-Haves (work in progress)

I’ve had my Pocket PC for a few months now, and it’s time to make recommendations for new user. Advice will be mostly for users of the Axim x50.

Don’t get Windows Mobile 5.0 for older Pocket PCs. It’s too slow and unwieldy to be useful. I have no idea on the newest models, but for the Axim x50 it was heartbreakingly slow. A scary downgrade back to WM2003 made things run much better.
Get a fast CF card for memory expansion. Whenever possible, install programs on the faster CF memory rather than in the main or built-in storage memory. Change the settings for Cache directories point there
Get a memory cleaner software to eliminate the garbage and keep your system running smoothly
Backup. Often.
Get screen protectors, these screens can get scratched up, even with the stylus.

Read on for Software selections

Magic Button: Get this program! It’s small and stable and is an absolute necessity. One of the strangest features of Windows Mobile is that it you can’t “CLOSE” programs. Magic Button lets you do this, and it gives you a switcher bar to let you jump to different programs. Freeware.
Battery Bar??: Just a simple little tool that displays bar graphs of battery life and memory use on the Today page. Freeware
Total Commander: An excellent file explorer tool that makes it easy to navigate through your Pocket PC. A must-have! Best of all it’s free! Freeware.
SKTools: This is an excellent package that’s useful for clean up those stray files, broken registry entries and tweaking your system. The free version is limited to 6 entries per list, but this is still amazingly versatile. This is a must have. Non-expiring shareware.
Mem Maid: O.k. SKTools is without a doubt an excellent tool, but the Memmaid is a far slicker tool. It doesn’t do quite as much as SKTools, but it’s still an excellent garbage collection piece of software. The demo lasts only a limited time. It’s worth buying this one. Expiring shareware.

Nethack: This elderly game is well suited for the Pocket PC. Simple interface, long game play, and familiarity make it an excellent choice. Novice players should look for advice on the web about how to play, there are many subtleties to playing well. Freeware
Big Two: Popular in Hong Kong, this pits you against three other computer gamers. A little like the game “Asshole”, (a.k.a. Corporation when your Grandma is around). Freeware

Phatnotes: The built-in Notes features is decidedly lacking in organization. Phatnotes overcomes this limitation with an excellent navigation interface. The improved organization comes at a price: You lose the sketch/handwriting recognition features of the built-in Notes. Be sure to disable the “Notes” synchronization in the ActiveSync, otherwise you will get some really strange results. Took me forever to figure that one out. Mucho dinero
ABIdea: A good organizer, but it doesn’t synchronize the notes to an easy PC file version. At least phatnotes synchronizes to Outlook Notes. Freeware

Adobe Reader: Read PDFs on your Pocket PC. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be very robust, and crashes on a lot of files. Freeware
Microsoft Reader: A (surprisingly) good reader for e-books. Lots of free literature out there. Only reads a proprietary (*.lit), non-editable format. You can generate your own *.lit files with an add-in to Microsoft Word. Freeware
Mobipocket: A must-have reader tool. Reads many *.prc “Doc” files. Freeware