[Phillip Dyson]

One of the great things about Windows Mobile is the ability to customize its behaviour, and look and feel with third party applications. Probably one of the most common ways to do this is to install today plugins and SIPs.

Unfortunately, plugins come at a price. And that price is often performance and responsiveness. I've been on the path to try and find the sweet spot between customization and performance.

So I eliminated all of my plugins down to the barest of bare bones. Okay, may not quite.

My favorites have always been:

• Calligrapher (SIP)
  Pocket Plus
  Wisbar Advanced 2
  Pocket Breeze (with a host of custom tabs)
  Contact Breeze
  Phone Alarm

I briefly tried Wisbar Advanced Desktop in its early days but couldn't go very far.

Unfortunately running all of these apps resulted in a slow and unreliable pocket pc. Calligrapher wouldn't even start up more than half the time without a soft reset. So, time to vote some more off the island.

First went Pocket Plus, then Calligrapher.
My devices was still sluggish.

Then started eliminateing custom tags in PocketBreeze. No more Egress, SPB Time, and WeatherPanel.

At the moment my tabs are PocketBreeze, ContactBreeze and PhatNotes.

Still slow.

So I switched to WA Lite and PhoneAlarm Lite. Still, even the password screen has visible delays when putting in my pin.

Finally I was down to the barest. I couldn't possibly remove anything else. But I had to get decent response out of my PDA. What to do? So I closed my eyes and hit exit on WA. The tears were flowing now. No task manager? I wont make it.

But then, wow! That was it. My TyTN seemed so much zippier. Even with FlexMail and PI running in the background, it was like it was fresh from the box.

Then I realized that I could survive with out a task manager. I think I'll give WM memory management a try for awhile. Who knows maybe I'll be back.

All of the apps that I've mentioned are great at what they do, and each one was a difficult decision to deactivate. And there are moments when I miss each one of them. But I think my 400mhz processor is much happier now that I've found a new lean.

Has anyone else gone through something similar? What plugin/SIP list did you end up with after you went lean?

[Phillip Dyson]

One of the great things about Windows Mobile is the ability to customize its behaviour, and look and feel with third party applications. Probably one of the most common ways to do this is to install today plugins and SIPs.

Unfortunately, plugins come at a price. And that price is often performance and responsiveness. I've been on the path to try and find the sweet spot between customization and performance.

So I eliminated all of my plugins down to the barest of bare bones. Okay, may not quite.

My favorites have always been:

• Calligrapher (SIP)
  Pocket Plus
  Wisbar Advanced 2
  Pocket Breeze (with a host of custom tabs)
  Contact Breeze
  Phone Alarm

I briefly tried Wisbar Advanced Desktop in its early days but couldn't go very far.

Unfortunately running all of these apps resulted in a slow and unreliable pocket pc. Calligrapher wouldn't even start up more than half the time without a soft reset. So, time to vote some more off the island.

First went Pocket Plus, then Calligrapher.
My devices was still sluggish.

Then started eliminateing custom tags in PocketBreeze. No more Egress, SPB Time, and WeatherPanel.

At the moment my tabs are PocketBreeze, ContactBreeze and PhatNotes.

Still slow.

So I switched to WA Lite and PhoneAlarm Lite. Still, even the password screen has visible delays when putting in my pin.

Finally I was down to the barest. I couldn't possibly remove anything else. But I had to get decent response out of my PDA. What to do? So I closed my eyes and hit exit on WA. The tears were flowing now. No task manager? I wont make it.

But then, wow! That was it. My TyTN seemed so much zippier. Even with FlexMail and PI running in the background, it was like it was fresh from the box.

Then I realized that I could survive with out a task manager. I think I'll give WM memory management a try for awhile. Who knows maybe I'll be back.

All of the apps that I've mentioned are great at what they do, and each one was a difficult decision to deactivate. And there are moments when I miss each one of them. But I think my 400mhz processor is much happier now that I've found a new lean.

Has anyone else gone through something similar? What plugin/SIP list did you end up with after you went lean?

[haesslich]

I've never had issues with my system.. but if I was to blame anything, I'd say that Calligrapher and Pocket Plus were the two major hitters as far as your system resource usage was concerned, followed by WBA2 and maybe ContactBreeze. Basically, with PocketBreeze manging my Today panel, I've found that my usable 'desktop' space is maximized, and I can keep PocketWeather and a few other things in the background.