SPB Weather

Supplier:SPB Software
Product:SPB Weather
Cost: [$14.95 with 20% off for exisiting SPB Customers.

SPB have just released their newest product, a new, very customizable today screen plug-in for Weather forecasts. In this review we take a look at the plug-in and it's features. Just check the screen shot to see how good this looks!

SPB were very kind in forwarding us an advance preview copy of SPB Weather. This kind of plug-in is new to me as I've not used any of the other Weather plug-ins. Reading the offical list of features is impressive. Read on for more...








Features

• Configurable weather sources.
• Different view modes.
• 10 professional skins.
• Easy configuration from context menu.
• WM 2003 SE (VGA, Landscape) support.
• Detailed weather popup.
• Favorite city list.
• Predefined locations database.
• Custom cities.
• Manual and automatic data update.
• Traffic statistics.

With these things in mind, I began to install the software. Installation was via a PC/Activesync installer and very straight forward. The plug-in registers itself automatically and the device does not need a reset. Tap n' Hold anywhere on SPB Weather and choose options, or tap the Sun icon to go directly to the options screen. As you can see from the bottom of the following screen shot, the options screen is broken into five separate tabs - Cities, Views, Units, Sync and Stats.

I tapped the Cities tab and then tapped 'Add'. This produced an easy selection screen, covering almost 200 countries and most regions within them. This made finding my home city of Dublin pretty easy! Futhermore the actual display name of the city can be changed to anything you like and lastly, you can add a custom city so long as it's supported by a weather source. Having successfully added Dublin, I also added in Glasgow and New York. For each city you add you can choose what Weather source to use, or if needed you can actually define your own source.





With my cities now added I proceeded to tap on the view tab. From this screen you have the option to select from 4, 5, or 7 day forecasts or a multiline display. Tapping on any selection displays a preview so it's really easy to gauge how the today screen will look. Additionally, from within the view tab, we can choose any of the installed skins for the weather icons. This customizable element of the program is a skinners delight and hey, if you are not into skinning yourself then I'm sure that SPB will have many skins that you choose from.

If you have precious little today screen space left, then you'll find the multiline display mode is a great choice. This view minimizes the plug-in and you can also restrict the number of cities that are displayed while in this view. One thing to note here, is that if you have a today screen full of plug-ins then you'll have a scroll bar on the right hand side of your device. With this bar viewable, the rightmost weather forecasts are not entirely readable as the plug-in claims the full width of the display.




The units screen is very useful, even though you'll most likely only configure it once. This was great for me as Ireland as just gone totally metric, so I was able to switch to KM/H to measure speed in Kilometers.


The Sync tab allows complete control over the method of updates for the Weather plug-in. I personally prefer to have the updates performed while docked, and once you have your Activesync settings configured for passthrough, the plug-in will detect that a connection has been made and go ahead and update all configured cities. You can also specify to update after a new city is added, although if you do this away from your activesync connection you will incur dial-up or gprs costs. To gauge the costs you can look at the stats tab you'll see the amount of data downloaded from the configured Weather sources.

I did find that by default the plug-in is configured to update every hour, you might want to change that otherwise your default internet connection will be invoked.




Back on the Today screen, we can now see the different tabs for my configured cities and chosen view. Tap n' Hold allows you to refresh all cities or the currently selected city immediately. While the updates are being received the sun icon rotates as a visual indicator that something is happening, this is really nice touch. You can also switch the skin from the Today screen without entering the options which is a handy feature.

One of my favorite features of SPB Weather the detailed report you get by tapping on any particular day. This is broken down into morning, afternoon and evening and shows any forecast change for the day. The detailed report also shows the last update time.




While out to lunch with a friend of mine, we got to chatting about holiday destinations, he settled for Barcelona so I added this to my Weather cities and proceeded to perform a manual update. My internet connection was established and the sun icon was rotating but the information did not arrive, (see the screen shot, I'm connected but Weather reports no connection!). I found that I had to switch the weather source from Weather.com to intellicast and refresh again to get the information in. This is not really the fault of the plug-in but more a limitation on the weather source. It would be pretty good if there was a method to discover the best source when adding a city.



Conclusion
I think this application is programatically excellent in its execution and features. Before using it, I sat down and decided how I thought the application should work, I'm delighted to say that my thoughts were surpassed by the developers and then some....

SPB have produced some of the most useful software for PocketPC Devices, and clearly this trend is set to continue with the newest release. I've found using the plug-in to be really easy, and the forecasts received have been pretty accurate too - nearly as good as the BBC. The plug-in does not slow down my device by any noticeable amount and it easily switches from portrait to landscape mode on both the Today screen and from within any options screen. The initial height of the plug-in might be an issue for some, but I found the multiline overcame this for me. Overall I'm delighted to recommend this software for anybody needing a customizable, detailed, and accurate weather forecast no matter where in the world you live.

In the last screen shot I've compiled a small collage of screens taken for this review


For
• Highly customizable.
• Nearly two hundred predefined locations, and custom locations too.
• Detailed report by tapping on a day in the forecast.
• Skinnable icons.
• Landscape support.

Against
• Plug-in ignores the scroll bar
• Font can be a little small.





4WM Rating = 95%