Doug Raeburn
09-08-2004, 05:30 PM
<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-00.gif" /> <br /><b>Product Category:</b> Utilities<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> Dinarsoft<br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=79935">Handango</a> [Affiliate]<br /><b>Price:</b> $5.99 USD<br /><b>System Requirements:</b> Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003, 75 KB of Memory.<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><br /><br /><ul><li>Quick access to many frequently used functions;<li>Easy to use;<li>Easy to customize;<li>A steal at $5.99!</ul><b>Cons:</b><ul><li>Custom colors don't use theme colors.</ul><b>Summary:</b><br />If you’re like me, you’re tired of all the taps required to get at the Settings for your Pocket PC. HandyMenu cuts your tap expenditure in half, and does so for the price of some value meals at a fast food restaurant. <br /><br />You really owe it to yourself to check it out. My full review contains everything you need to know, so read on… <!> <PAGEBREAK> <br /><br /><span><b>Introduction</b></span><br />Start – Settings – System – Memory. Four taps to get from the Start screen to the Memory settings on a Pocket PC. While the Pocket PC makes it very convenient and quick to do many things, getting at your settings is not one of them. DinarSoft has come up with an approach for quick access to Settings and other commonly used functions, and they’ve implemented their solution in a utility product that they call HandyMenu. Let’s put the latest version (2.5) through its paces.<br /><br /><span><b>Using HandyMenu</b></span><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-01.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 1: The HandyMenu icon is next to the bell.</i><br /><br />After an easy “by the book” installation procedure, you have a new icon in your system tray. This is how you access HandyMenu. The standard icon is an on/off button, but you can replace it with another icon of your choice if you so desire.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-02.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 2: Now you know why they call it HandyMenu…</i><br /><br />Tap on the icon, and HandyMenu is displayed. The choices displayed on the menu in Figure 2 are the defaults upon installation, but you can customize the menu in a number of ways, which I’ll cover later in this review.<br /><br />To go back to the example at the beginning of this review, you can use HandyMenu to access your Memory settings with 2 taps, instead of the standard 4 taps. Cutting the number of steps involved in a common and simple task such as this is, as Martha Stewart used to say, a good thing. Similar “tap savings” can be achieved if you adjust your brightness settings or change your Today theme frequently.<br /><br />Soft Reset can be a useful command as well. If your favorite case doesn’t happen to provide access to the reset button, you can perform a soft reset right from HandyMenu instead of removing your Pocket PC from its case. My case does provide access to the reset button, but my favorite 3rd party stylus is too large to push the button, so I have to unscrew the top of the stylus to get at a special tip that can push the button. Or I can skip all that and just use HandyMenu. The more I use this product, the more appropriate its name seems to be.<br /><br />And HandyMenu has even more convenience features. You can designate one function supported by HandyMenu as your “quick action”, which you can access via tap-and-hold on the HandyMenu icon. The default quick action is Power Off, but you can select from any of the functions that HandyMenu provides. Both HandyMenu and the quick action can be assigned to hardware buttons.<br /> <PAGEBREAK> <br /><span><b>Configuring HandyMenu</b></span><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-03.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 3: Hopefully you don’t need quick and frequent access to Hard Reset…</i><br /><br />If you refer back to Figure 2, you’ll see a little blue button at the top of the menu. This takes you to the HandyMenu Settings. To add a menu item to HandyMenu, simply put a checkmark next to it. Clear the checkmark to remove the item. It’s as simple as that. Use the arrow buttons to the right of the menu items to change the order of the items on your menu.<br /><br />You designate your quick action with the dropdown below the Menu Items. As stated earlier, it includes all of the menu items offered by HandyMenu, including Hard Reset. A bit of advice… don’t make Hard Reset your quick action.<br /><br />You can also select the actions that will activate HandyMenu and the quick action. The default upon installation is tap for the menu and tap-and-hold for the quick action. You can elect to reverse those actions as well.<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-04.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 4: More menu items…</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-05.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 5: … and even more!</i><br /><br />Figures 4 and 5 show more of the menu items supported by HandyMenu. It seems that they’ve covered most of the bases for frequently used functions.<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-06.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 6: Display Settings.</i><br /><br />HandyMenu includes both English and German language displays. You also have options to display icons with the menu items, to hide the tray icon (if you prefer to use hardware buttons, for example), and assign a custom tray icon.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/raeburn-aug04-handymenu-07.gif" /> <br /><i>Figure 7: Color Settings.</i><br /><br />You can set up custom colors on the screen shown in Figure 7. You can only have one set of custom colors, but you can switch between the standard colors and the custom colors by using the “Use Custom Colors” checkbox.<br /><br />The only thing that I’d like to see is an option to use the colors from your Today theme automatically. I always like to have at least 1 "con" so that the review is balanced, so this is it. It was a stretch to come up with it.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />HandyMenu packs a boatload of features and convenience into an easy-to-use and very affordable utility. It’s such a bargain at $5.99 that I recommend it to anyone and everyone who owns a Pocket PC.