HandNotes 3.1 For Pocket PC And Windows XP

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.choung.net/HandNotes/">http://www.choung.net/HandNotes/</a><br /><br />Somehow this note application has fallen below my radar, but I am trying it out now as you are reading this. "HandNotes make use of your hand-written notes in various ways. You can send your notes as a bitmap image email attachment, set alarms, or use them with the built-in Calendar and Today screen plug-in for future reminders."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2004/20040315-handnotes3.gif" /><br /><br />Features include:<br /><br />• Freely Jot Down Your Ideas, you do not have to worry about any letter recognizer, just write down as if you were using a pen and paper.<br />• Plan ahead with HandNotes Calendar and Reminders.You can add quick hand-written notes to a particular date and HandNotes Today plug-in will automatically remind you about the notes on that day. Just tap the calendar date square and write down your schedule!<br />• HandNotes also supports setting an audible alarm to notes. On set date/time, your Pocket PC will alert you with sounds and blinking LED lights, and show your notes. <br />• Get Organized with HandNotes File Manager. Your notes can be grouped or categorized using a familiar folder tree. You can easily create a folder or move notes from one folder to another simply by tapping menu items.<br />• Add text comments to your notes.<br />• Email your notes at .BMP files.<br />• HandNotes Desktop Companion. It is specially prepared for the HandNotes for PocketPC users and you can use it freely as long as you own your copy of HandNotes.<br /><br />It works on all Pocket PC 2000, 2002 and 2003 devices. The desktop application works on 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP. The installer does require ActiveSync 3.6 or higher to work, so that means Windows 95 is not supported. It takes 230K of storage space on your device. The whole package is <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=29119">$19.95 and there is a 14 day trial</a>. <i>(affiliate link)</i>

[welmoed]

I've tried to install this twice on my iPaq2215 and twice it's hosed my system. No clue why.

--Welmoed

[Gerard]

Stores notes as BMP files? !!! The application may take up less than 300KB of precious RAM, which is good, but that's approximately 1MB for every 4 note files saved. Want to save 100 notes? That's between 20 and 24MB, depending on whether this thing offers fullscreen or a more typical 'paper' size for such screens on a PPC of about 268x240 pixels (the 320 of the vertical screen minus top and bottom bars). Bitmaps of these dimensions are usually saved as about 192KB per file, with fullscreen typically being about 225KB. Unless they're using a reduced-layer or otherwise compressed format, this thing will quickly become a nightmare of lost memory for heavy users.

Compare that to apMemo (http://www.apmemo.com/), which doesn't store the 'paper' of reminder scrawls, just the 'ink', in a little DAT file. In normal use, fitting a small handful of words per page, this translates to approximately 6 or 7KB per page. Doesn't really start becoming significant until few thousand notes have been recorded... though this application isn't really designed to cope with that many, as one would have to page through every one to find any individual note. It's more of a quick appointment/reminder application, where you delete things once dealt with, saving the relatively inefficient appointment entry procedure of Calendar for non-repeating, simple appointments.

I'm not saying this other thing is no good, not at all. Just suggesting that the authors might want to consider some better format than bmp, perhaps GIF, since the last legal issues on GIF use without license fees should expire this summer. apMemo doesn't contain any of the fancy stuff this one does, like email sharing (unless you share your entire note DAT file with someone, and they use the standalone viewer for PCs which is free...) or whatever else this offers. It's simple and effective for what it does, which is something a bit different.

[Ed Hansberry]

Stores notes as BMP files? !!!
It only saves as .BMP for emailing purposes. It doesn't store anything in that format.

[Gerard]

Ah, I see. My bad.