Registry Tweaks!!! Are they Safe?

[coosbaytv]

Hey there! I am new to PPC here and come from a Palm OS background.

I must say, there are some things that I am really enjoying with this IPAQ 1930 device I aquired.

One of your forum members (John John) was kind enough to give me a great deal on a wifi card and I am in awe of streaming video and audio on this little gem!

One of the tweaks I am interested in is changing IE to the 6.0 setting from 4.1. This is supposed to allow you a more PC like surfing experience.

The other Registry Edit I am curious about is with the audio codecs for Skype. There is info on the Skype forum to allow a 200 MHZ device (mine) to use Skype for PPC.

So, that said, I really don't want to CRASH this thing, so my question is generally are these things safe? Obviously, I am not talking about editing the registry on my own and "playing with settings", but using these tweaks by folks who know what they are doing...

Any experiences (pro or con) with reg edit tweaks?

I want alot of feedback on this so feel free to share your experience!

Am I just a baby and need to not strees about this or are these things to be taken very cautiously?

Thanks, Jay

[Janak Parekh]

Of course, registry tweaking if done incorrectly can cause instabilities in your device; if you decide to do something, make sure to backup first. It's not hard, but you do have to be careful.

If you don't want to tweak the registry directly, you may want to consider acquiring a program that does it for you, like Tweaks2k2 (http://www.tweaks2k2.com/).

--janak

[coosbaytv]

Janak:

thanks for the quick info.

I am using the app PHM reg edit with explicit directions only on the modifications that I want to make that I mentioned in the post.

As far as backup, I really don't have anything of value on the IPQA, my concern is more of destroying it via a bad choice beyond a hard reset.

Any comments on the IE or Skype tweaks? just curious...

Jay

[Janak Parekh]

As far as backup, I really don't have anything of value on the IPQA, my concern is more of destroying it via a bad choice beyond a hard reset.
Then I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's hard to destroy your PDA via registry editing to the point where it won't even hard reset. I'm guessing the only ways to do that would be to tweak hardware-sensitive settings, like the CPU clock, but most of these aren't easy to access (or accessible at all) via the registry. Just follow the instructions carefully, and good luck.

Any comments on the IE or Skype tweaks? just curious...
I know of them, but I haven't used them, so I don't know how well they work. Sorry. ;)

--janak

[Menneisyys]

Any comments on the IE or Skype tweaks? just curious...

You mean the cache relocation and User-Agent tweaks? They are highly recommended. See for example this article (http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17997) on the former and this (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=796&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1) on the latter. Also, under WM5, you may want to override the default scrolling behaviour (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=547&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1) - also via the Registry.

[coosbaytv]

Menneissys,

thanks for the great info!

on this same subject, I come from the Palm OS side so this is very informative.

FYI the tweaks i mentioned are working great!

since i only have one card slot SD, i can't save PIE files to it while online (using wifi card).
in the reg tweaks, can i control the size allowed for temp files so it doesn't eat all my RAM?

also, is there a way to access ROM like with Palm OS / Jack Flash?

lastly, do you know of a free or cheaper landscape app? i am testing Virtual Display now.

thanks, Jay

[Menneisyys]

since i only have one card slot SD, i can't save PIE files to it while online (using wifi card).
in the reg tweaks, can i control the size allowed for temp files so it doesn't eat all my RAM?

Yes, you can maximize the in-memory cache size. However, under WM2003, it won't grow over, AFAIK, 2 or 4 Mbytes, unlike on, say, WM2003SE; that is, you don't really need to set its maximal size.


also, is there a way to access ROM like with Palm OS / Jack Flash?

Do you want to freely delete programs etc. from the ROM (I'm unsure about Jack Flash - dunno if it's meant for this stuff). If yes, then, it won't work: for Pocket PC's, so-called 'ROM kitchens' are developed hackers. For the 1930, there're no such projects - "only" for some current devices and the HTC Phone Edition ones


lastly, do you know of a free or cheaper landscape app? i am testing Virtual Display now.


Unfortunately, under WM2003 (the OS of the iPAQ 1930), that's the only choice of using the PDA in Landscape mode.