Long time Palm user just bought ipac 4155 - now what do I do with it?

[Veggie_Musician]

Hi all first time post - Ive just bought a ipac 4155 for £279 (dunno if this was a good price) but was having probs with my Palm T3 so thought Id try this.

Can anyone guid me though the best way of setting this thing up - best progs comming from a palm user and other good stuff - want to know good websites to go to as well.

thanks

Veggie

[IceCaveman]

Something to begin with:
cLaunch ( a tabbed application launcher )
WisBar Advance to configure the title bar the way you want it.

[Kacey Green]

it's spelled iPAQ, and wisbar can have issuses, with your device's conncections, many users here swear by wisbar though. :wink:
I'd like to welcome both of you to the PPCT community. :)

[Zack Mahdavi]

Welcome! You followed the same path I did to get a Pocket PC..

Anyway, here's a list of the programs I use now:

Pocket Informant : I don't like the built-in PIM tools that come with the Pocket PC. Pocket Informant is a great replacement.
Battery Bar: great utility that comes with a program launcher for the today screen, a task switcher, and a battery meter that goes below the clock.
Journal Bar: displays offline news and weather on your today screen.
Adobe Acrobat Reader: free from Adobe.
AOL Instant Messenger: AOL now charges for it, but if you're interested, there's plenty links out there to an international free-version.
BetaPlayer: Great Pocket PC DiVX video player (free).
Egress: Awesome RSS reader.
eWallet: excellent and secure wallet program.
Fitaly Keyboard: there's a very steep learning curve, but this is now my favorite input method. Much faster than graffiti.
Pocket Player: audio player for your Pocket PC that supports tons of different formats.
PocketPUTTY: If you connect to UNIX clients a lot, this is a great SSH client (free).
Resco File Explorer: Yet another must for browsing your Pocket PC's file contents.
SPB Finance: excellent financial tool for the PPC.
VNCViewer: good for viewing remote desktops (free).
WordBook: dictionary program.. it has a great interface.
WorldMate: comes with your iPaq, but it's essential for world travel.

[dh]

There are many really good apps for the PPC. We may not have the same number of apps as POS has, but the quality is first class.

What you need depends of course on what you want you new Ipaq to do for you. There are great programs for organizing your life (Pocket Informant and Agenda Fusion Fusion being the best), good MS Office compatible programs (Textmaker and Planmaker) and just about everything else.

If you like to read eBooks, listen to music or watch movies, your Ipaq will be great as well. Your only limits are what you want to do and how much you want to spend. (There are freeware apps for PPC, but most of the programs I use I purchased).

Look around the Software forum. You'll find lots of ideas there. I came here from the Palm world as well and found there is a lot more fun to be had with PPC.

Oh, check this thread for ideas on other websites to visit: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27756

[Kacey Green]

there are several interesting apps at cebeens

[Veggie_Musician]

Thanks for the replies - Ive already tried BetaPlayer and its fantastic - seems to play anything I thro at it. With a T3 its can be very chosie with how you encode Divx's.

On the whole I do like the 4155. mp3 sound great on it too - another weakness witht the T3 ( bass disstorted sometimes).

But I do miss the speed of the T3. Anyone whos used a Palm will understand that. The iPac performs like a 400Mz PC but a T3 feels like one over 1Ghz. BTW a palm can do everything a PPC can really but some things better other worst - theres not much in it really now.

Is Pocket Informant like the Palm PIM's?


Also I know nothing on Wifi - can u get it for free in these so called "hot spots"?

[dh]

Is Pocket Informant like the Palm PIM's?

Yes, kind of, not the Palm built in ones but the third party PIMs. If you've used Agendus or Datbk5 it's similar in some respects.
One of the nice things is the developer has a great forum for discussing the product and new developments. www.pocketinformant.com/forums
Download the trial and check it out. :D

[Zack Mahdavi]

Also I know nothing on Wifi - can u get it for free in these so called "hot spots"?

Enjoy your iPaq 4155! Regarding your question, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. If you're talking about the public ones, it depends. Some places, such as Panera's Bread and a few Pilot-testing McDonald's provide free WiFi. However, on the whole, public WiFi costs money. Most places (such as Starbucks, airports, etc) use T-Mobile's HotSpot (http://www.t-mobile.com/hotspot/), which is pretty expensive. I personally use my WiFi all around the University of Texas at Austin campus and other small shops around Austin that offer free WiFi.

However, you can also use WiFi at home if you purchase a WiFi router. They're pretty cheap nowadays. You can get a nice Netgear at Amazon for around $25 after rebates.

[nosmohtac]

I don't want to start a big debate here, but many people use their PPC to read ebooks. There are many great readers available, so try them and see what works best for you.
While Adobe Acrobat Reader for PPC is quite popular, I strongly dislike the file size of the documents. I highly recommend µbook. It's a free download from gowerpoint.com. If you like it you can make a paypal donation. This ebook reader is the most versatile I've seen. It will oen any document in .rtf,.txt,.html,or any palm document. This isn't so amazing, considering that Mobipocket reader will read the same file types, but µbook allows you to zip all of your books, and reads them from the zip file.

I've added my .02, but I agree with the previous posts as far as essential programs go

[Aerestis]

You should send it to my address :)