Supplier:SPB Software
Product:SPB PocketPlus 3.0
Cost:$24.95 with version 2 upgrade price at $9.99.
SPB have released an update (this is happening a lot eh?) to PocketPlus. The product now stands at version 3.0. In this review we will take a look at the changes in this version. We will offer our opinions on the good and bad and we'll let you know if this update is worth your hard earned!
Read on for more...
PocketPlus Features
Today Plug-in: Tabs. Battery, backlight, memory indicators, program shortcuts and launcher
File Explorer: ZIP support, "Folder Up" button, Storage card format, and file properties
Close Button: The close (X) button really closes programs, and a running task manager
Pocket Internet Explorer: Multiple windows, full screen mode, save as, and view source
Misc: Taskbar battery indicator, extended Pocket PC themes, backup/restore, and repeating alarm support.
And introducing
Encryption in File Explorer.
Safe mode boot (disables plug-ins and services on reset)
Tab icons.
Pocket Internet Explorer - Open in Background.
Close running apps from the task manager without switching
Actions can be assigned to a hard button on your device (e.g. - alt+tab)
SPB Diary can be added as a tab to PocketPlus.
Windows Mobile 5 Support.
Better VGA Support
Bug fixes.
I last reviewed PocketPlus in February. That review can be read
here. Veteran and even no-so-veteran users among us will remember when SPB moved from version 1.2 to version 2 of Pocket Plus there was a complete and superb overhaul of the product. This time round though, some of the updates are the kind you can't visualize and have occurred at the service level, which isn't a bad thing, it just appears that you are getting less bang-for-buck. So, why is there no free upgrade considering that this version lists bug fixes as part of it's features? That's a question I've put to SPB and their response is below.
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"It was not a "bug fix release" but we definately fixed known bugs. Do you know any company that does not fix existing bugs during development? We think the users will like the new features and we want to make this upgrade very acceptable from price point of view so it will be cheaper than our standard 50% of full product price this time. I think it will be a good value for spent money."
I also asked Why is this a new version and not just a point release? the response is below:
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The previous major version of Spb Pocket Plus was released more than one year ago in May 2004. Since those time we have invested a lot of resources in the new version of Spb Pocket Plus to add features that were the most requested by our customers. We consider Spb Pocket Plus as a system extension utility. Something like a service pack. Most features of Spb Pocket Plus are extensions of standard Pocket PC programs....First we have improved all existing features...we have added possibility to use icons in tabs. We have improved file explorer by adding file encryption support...."Open in Background" command in Pocket IE, the close icon in the task manager...safe mode and button based task manager...Another important improvement for key operating scenario is support navigation in the Today plug-in with arrow buttons. Now you can launch program much faster without using stylus. And finally I want to mention changes that are not visible at all but took a lot of our time. We spent about 25-30% of all development time for one simple task - to make Spb Pocket Plus faster.
With this in mind, let's begin...
I'm going to focus mostly on the new features in this review, the older review lists the general features in depth and can be seen
here.
So, jumping straight in the first shot below you'll see what PocketPlus looks like after a little configuration. To get the configuring done, you need to go into the settings screen where you are presented with a list of the features that are configurable options. To see the new features you need to scroll to the bottom of the table, where you'll find Buttons and Safe mode.
Highlighing any feature and tapping on the 'feature options' button takes you to the configuration screen for that feature. The items with new options are Today Plug-in. File Explorer, Buttons and Safe Mode. Work with me here as I'll go through the new options in reverse order starting with the last one - Safe Mode.
Safe Mode is a new feature that allows you to boot your device and disable all Today Plug-ins, autorun applications and services. It's not possible for me to show you a screen grab of this unfortunately, due to it being only operational at boot mode. Safe mode is accessed when you soft reset your device, the allowable options for the safe mode prompt are either 'On every reset' or 'If system worked less than one minute'.
The result of selecting 'On every reset' is that you will see a message during soft reset advising you to tap on the screen to activate safe mode. Once activated the device boots without any of the installed plug-ins appearing on the today screen. This is very useful if you need to track a plug-in problem or other software issue. It also allows clean removal of software that would otherwise require additional soft resets to disable the plug-in or autorun.
The other option 'If system worked less than one minute' displays the safe mode prompt only if you reset your device twice within one minute. This option assumes that you will see any issue arising within this time, that could be a device hang or a plug-in or other software causing some in-stability.
Looking next at the feature options for 'Buttons'. This is very useful and well thought out, although I think the two option buttons are in the wrong order. You need to edit commands before you can assign them to buttons, so let's look at the 'Edit Commands' bit first.
Tapping on the button produces a list of the command actions that can be accessed with a single button tap. The list of commands is huge and ranges from a simple Switch Programs (Alt+Tab) action through volume and backlight loops and on to the Connections screen. Enabling any command means that you've now created an action that can be assigned to a single tap of a hardware button.
Tapping Next returns you to the 'Buttons' options screen where you can now 'Assign to Buttons'. Once activated, you will get the same button assignment screen that you can access by tapping Start|Settings|and Buttons. From here you select which button to assign to which program action. This is a real time saver for those that like shortcuts but on my Magician I've only four assignable buttons that are in daily use already. This would have been excellent if SPB could have implemented a push and hold button action, where by a single push would do the default action, but a push and hold would active another action thereby giving each hard button two or more actions. I'm sure that through use and feature requests we will see this in a future version.
Next up is File Explorer. In here we have two new features, first up is 'Enable encryption support'. Unfortunately, there's no further options for the encryption cipher or strength so I can't advise you how good it is. Once enabled though, you can encrypt a file by tap and holding on it, and selecting 'Encrypt File' from the pop-up menu. You then assign a password to the file and decide if the original non encrypted version gets deleted.
The other new File Explorer option which can be seen above, is 'Enable "Add to Today Screen"'. This adds another option to the tap and hold pop-up menu. When selected it places an icon for that file or program on the Today Screen in the program shortcut space. This is handy for creating shortcuts without going through the add/remove icons process
Most important is the Today Plug-in. This is the feature that I expect draws most users to this software initially. So I can happily report that there are a couple of new options available. One such option is the ability to add in Pocket Diary Tabs. This is useful if you want to maximise the available space on your today screen. You can add in individual tabs from Diary, but this is not really ideal, because if you add just one of the Diary tabs, the other ones are no longer visible on the today screen. This is a real omission and one that I hope will be addressed soon.
Furthermore, when you do enable all the Diary tabs the display when using them is not very well optimised for the screen. Normally diary uses it's navigation tabs on the left side of the display. When the tabs are integrated to Pocket Plus, their previously occupied space is now blank. This means that calendar entries look pretty squashed un-necessarily. Also, whatever height you enable for Diary is now the minimum height of Pocket Plus which can mean a lot of wasted today screen space which kind of defeats the purpose of adding the tabs in the first place. I would say that more consideration needs to be given to this area, one quick way to overcome the wasted space would be to make each tab dynamically expand and collapse to their required height.
Another new feature is the ability to put little icons on each tab name. This gives a little visual indicator to each tab. I think this has a 'cute' feeling about it, but it's really not adding to the product in my opinion. This is because, the tab names cannot be hidden. If they could then the tabs would look quite nice as you could have a different icon indicator for each tab and that's all that would be visible from the Today screen. Where-as at the moment, you can only add an icon to the tab name which also has to be present.
EDIT: Actually, by renaming the tab leaving it blank, the name can be removed. Thanks again Vassili.
There's also two very important advanced options. To access them you must tap on the 'Tools' menu from the options screen, then tap on 'Advanced Options'. In here you'll find the option to enable Repeating Alarm support and Storage Card indicators. An explicit warning will appear about the alarms not functioning properly on some Windows Mobile 2003 devices, but I've not found any issue with it on the magician. Likewise with the Storage Card Indicator. Once you have enabled these options, then Repeating Alarms becomes a configurable feature item and Storage Card Indicators can be added to the Today Screen.
Finally a word on the Windows Mobile Version 5 support. This manifests itself through one-handed operation allowing navigation and item selection without the use of the Stylus. This is something that I really go for and one-handed operation is something that I'm really looking forward to Windows Mobile 5 for. To give an example of the usefulness I must explain that the last icon on my Today screen is the Suspend icon.
I frequently find myself tapping this icon with my finger to turn the device off, that's why I chose the large icon display. But with the one-handed operation I can quickly navigate to the icon and select it with the action button on my device. The result is that I can reduce the icon size and add more icons to the today page, which for me is a bonus.
One-handed navigation is not without it's quirks though, if you happen to use SBSH Pocket Breeze then when you navigate up/down or left/right within PocketPlus you are also navigating with PocketBreeze which is not intended. The animated screen shots below give an example.
Conclusion
SPB PocketPlus continues to evolve and gain new features release after release. (Major or Minor), some features are instantly excellent and some need more work.
One big non-visual improvement is the overall speed of the plug-in, even after a soft-reset the plug-in appears quickly and responds quickly. It feels like a lighter version to me! From my discussions with the developers this was a goal that they set for this version and required extensive re-writes of underlying code. SPB have spent almost 30% of development time working on the speed and it clearly shows. This versions has a big improvement in speed that can be measured without the need for benchmarking software.
No matter if you agree or not with the 'upgrade versus new version' policy of SPB Software (available to view
here. )there is no denying that this is an excellent application. In my opinion though it's much more beneficial to first time users as they get all the advantages of the latest version without incurring the upgrade price to get the bugs fixed!
As an upgrade however, this really grinds me but then you do get it less than half price, I just really, really wish that I didn't see 'Bugs Fixed' on the feature list for this version. But as Vassal said earlier and I quote again Quote: docWrite("quote")
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Do you know any company that does not fix existing bugs during development?
honestly, no I don't and that's a fair statement! Let me take this opportunity to thank Vassal very much for his reply to my questions and also to SPB Software House for the review opportunity.
In the last screen shot I've compiled a small collage of screens not already shown that were taken for this review
For
Very customizable.
File Encryption support for File Explorer.
Support for adding SPB Diary Tabs
Custom actions can be assigned to hardware keys.
Repeating Alarms and Storage Card Indicators.
Tab Display Icons.
Much Faster all round.
Status icons have been enhanced to provide closer matching to themes.
Safe Mode Boot Options.
One handed navigation.
'Add to Today Screen' from anywhere using File Explorer.
Against
New version instead of a point release.
Wasted Space in Today screen when incorporating Diary Tabs.
Diary tabs not visible if just one tab is added to Pocket Plus.
No encryption cipher or strength configuration.
Icons cannot be placed to the edge of the screen on the right hand side.
I am rating this software twice, the first rating below is what Id give the software if I were a first time user. The second rating is how Id rate the software as a chargeable upgrade.
4WM First time user Rating 90%
4WM Upgrade user Rating 60%
Linear Mode
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