After 24 hours, some software thoughts

[dh]

Now I've been a proud SP5 owner for all of twenty four hours, I had the chance to check out some of the applications available for my Smartphone.

Here are some initial thoughts:

PIM Software
Being a fan of Pocket Informant on the PPC and KO/PI on the Zaurus, I must have a super charged PIM. I promptly downloaded Power Calendar/Tasks and Papyrus and have tried them both out.

Of the two, I much prefer Papyrus, it just seems to be better suited to the Smartphone platform. There are two annoying things though, first it doesn't have a good date picker in the way that Power Calendar does. I found myself have to use a printed calendar to help out. I also don't seem to be able to uninstall it. Even when it claims to be uninstalled and no longer shows up, it's still there.

I'm also a bit - well very actually - annoyed with the two apps that make up DeveloperOne's PIM. As I mentioned, I really like the date picker, I can't imagine why Papyrus doesn't have this. The thing I dislike is that after about 30 minutes use, it decided my 15 day trial had expired and stopped working. :x At least it uninstalls without any problems.

Document Viewing
Having used excellent document viewers on both my PPC and Zaurus, I had high hopes for Westek's ClearVue Suite. The hopes were soon dashed and this set of applications is very unimpressive. I had assumed it would be like Repligo or my open source Zaurus PDF reader and would format the pages so that they can be read on the screen - like flow view in Repligo. No such luck, it seems to make a simple image that is either too small to read or needs way too much sideways scrolling.

Maybe I'm missing something, but too me this software is not very good at all. Hope M$oft hurries up with Office for Smartphone.

xBar
What no trial version? Oh well, it seemed to have gotten good reviews so I whipped out the old MasterCard. Seems to work just fine.


Note Taking
I have the trial of PhatNotes which was always one of my favourite PPC apps. Seems to be just fine so far. I'm not going to be able to really test it until I get the Stowaway keyboard.

Tweaks2k2
Downloaded this to play around and made a couple of changes included moving my inbox to my storage card. Comes with a warning that doing this can bugger up the card formatting. Hope not!

So that's the story so far. If Papyrus had a nice way to pick dates I'd be pretty happy.

Cheers!
David

[Mike Temporale]

I also don't seem to be able to uninstall it. Even when it claims to be uninstalled and no longer shows up, it's still there.

Ah yes, the uninstall issues. This has nothing to do with Papyrus. It's all WinMo5. :(

If you come across a program that won't uninstall, the first thing you need to do, is make sure you leave it in the Remove Programs menu. Then reboot the phone. Once the phone is up and running, remove the application. It should remove without problems.

It sounds like you have already removed it from the list, but it's still installed. What you'll need to do, is reboot the phone. Then sync with your desktop. Run the install, it will prompt to remove the old version. Let it - if it fails, that's fine. Then go ahead with the install. Once it's installed. Reboot the phone and remove the program.

Rather annoying bug, eh?!

[dh]

Thanks Mike. I have it back on my list of programs so I'm going to leave it right there.

Other than the date picking thing I mentioned, I really like this app. It reminds me of the early versions of Pocket Informant, before the big race with Agenda Fusion to cram in as many features as humanly possible.

David