Must-Have Pocket PC Software?

MBCook asks: "I just got a new Pocket PC with Windows Mobile 2003 SE on it. I haven't owned a PDA since my old HP 320LX (7 years ago, with Windows CE 1.0!). So since I've been out of the game for a while, I'd like to ask: what PocketPC software (both commercial and free) do you find essential? What little gems can't you live without? Game, productivity, utility, oddity, or other... I'd love to know what Slashdot readers find to be the best software."

Comments

iPodder

[jackr]

iPodder on your desktop. And a really big memory stick :). And acrobat reader.

Re:iPodder

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Instead of a memory stick, I bought a PCMCIA sleeve for my iPaq and put a 5GB Kingston Datapak in it.

This gives me plenty of room for all the things I want to have with me (music, movies, porn, etc).

One of the most handy utilities for me is SPB Pocket Plus v2, it provides a *real* close button to end applications (instead of just minimizing them), a good file explorer, some enhancement for Pocket IE, a Today screen plugin that shows memory, storage, backlight adjustment bar and more.

I use a calculator program called 1-Calc, a fabulous MS Project compatible project planner called Pocket Plan, a Backup/Recovery tool called Sprite Backup which will let you restore your system without having to install the program first (the backup file contains the restore .exe) and it also has a conduit for backing up to your PC if your handheld doesn't have enough room for storing it. I have two different drawing programs, Pocket Artist for bitmap editing and Vectorsoft Draw for vector based work. Resco Picture Viewer is handy for carrying around pictures of your kids, etc.

I use BetaPlayer as my preferred movie viewer and PocketPlayer as my music player. Windows Media Player will work for most things, but doesn't handle DivX like BetaPlayer.

When it comes to games, I have Chesscapade - a battlechess type program, Pocket Doom and Pocket Hexen, Bejeweled, the Sony-brand Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are both good, and of course I have the premiere 3D RPG Ultima Underworld, which plays just like the original PC version.

VNC

[Kris_J]

Of the 3rd-party stuff I have on mine, I use VNC the most. Other than that I use the pocket IE that's on there lots, but I'd prefer a version of Opera with decent small-screen rendering like the Symbian Series 60 product.

Tennis Addict

[BoomerSooner]

This game is awesome link

It used to be by hexacto or something, I guess they changed their name.

What I have...

[SoCalChris]

MiniStumbler. It's Net Stumbler for your PocketPC (free)
http://www.stumbler.net

PocketLAN. It allows you to connect to network shares, and print to network printers. ($15)
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=2 825

If you feel like trying to find it, and screwing around with a few hacks, TodayPlus is an abandoned today screen replacement. It was abandoned about a year ago, while it was in beta testing. The beta versions all expired earlier this year, but there is a small but very loyal userbase that has a crack for it. I still haven't found anything that comes close to the features that this program offers, and it's free. Good luck finding a download though.
http://www.jhollin1138.com/todayplus/

Pocket Streets. Take a map with you. The newest version also supports GPS. ($30-$120)
http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/pocketstreets/de fault.mspx

Re:The most essential is ...

[str8edge]

There was a Palm OS 4 emulator out awhile ago. I'm not sure if it was GPL'd or commercial software, but I tried it out, and was able to play Dope Wars on it. you might be able to find info on it at palminfocenter.

Skype!

[Deliveranc3]

I have a palm pilot and I am really hurting to run skype!

I know you probably have a cell phone but it would be pretty awsome. And you can make outgoing calls without worrying about incomming ones.

You need Mic, audio, decent processor, and wifi but if you bought a nice new pocketPC then you should have all of that.

Pocket PC software

[mknewman]

Here's what I have on my Toshiba E805 with Windows Mobile 2003 SE.

Aim Productions Pool Challenge
Microsoft AppLaunch
stumbler.net Ministumbler
Omega One Journal Bar Expansion Pack
Macroedia Flash Player ActiveX
Omega One Journal Bar
Gigabyte Solutions Ltd Animated Today
ZIO Interactive Simcity 2000
Anton Tomov Battery Analyzer
Anton Tomov Pocket Hack Master
IdealTek Pocket Luach
Daniel East's Pocket Quake 2
Nomad Electronics PocketStars
Microsoft Voice Command
JS Ark2
JS Boyan Crystal
JS Turjah
JS Turjah2
Ruksun Telnet Force
Ruksun ScottyFTP
Ruksun Netforce
VL Inc Pocket Gphone
Agfa Monotype Fonts
Conduits TaskSwitcher
Nyditot Virtual Display 3.22
Conduits Peacemaker Pro
Conduits Pocket Spark
Adobe Acrobat Reader 1.0
Aim Productions Trial Halloween
Aim Prouductions Trial Iraqi Track
Game Energy Tic-Tac-Toe
AIM Productions Trial Challenge
SoftWinter StorageTools
LudiGames Rayman
Ansyr Primer (PocketPC)
Toshiba Text to Speech
ArcSoft PhotoBase
MpegTV PocketTV
ScaryBear Software Check Notifications
Glass Lantern PocketLoupe
Zio Interactive Metalion
Amazing Games Chopper Alley
PDAwin TV remote controller
Resco Registry Add-in
Resco Explorer 2003
Resco FTP Add-in
ProCar Racing
Microsoft Activation
ScaryBear Software ClearNotify
Microsoft Power Contacts
Xemi Computers LTD Pocket Explorer MultiIE
PeanutPress Ereader
Microsoft Reader

Ebook reader and possibly emulator for games

[jebiester]

An ebook reader is a good idea. This way you can carry a virtual library of good books with you anywhere you go. Mobipocket seems alright for this, although many features are now only available on the pro version which isn't free anymore unfortunatley.

Another good application for the PocketPC is emulation. There are quiet a few good emulators if you're into playing classic games (eg. Apple IIe, C64, Spectrum, etc)

Familiar

[Matt Perry]

I found that Familiar was essential for my PocketPC. Even though the OS that came on my handheld synced with Outlook it didn't always work correctly even though both pieces of software were made by the same company. The original OS was also limited to Microsoft operating systems. Since I'm thinking about getting a Mac i wanted something that could work with a unix system.

Re:Familiar

[mrchaotica]

If you can get your Familiar-running PocketPC syncing to a Mac (or even merely being recognized as a storage device by the OS), be sure to tell me about it! I have an old iPaq 3650, but I could never get the MacOSX driver to work. I gave up and (just a few days ago) bought a Palm Tungsten E.

Also, I just checked: the latest version is still 0.1, which is what I tried and failed to use way back in the summer. But yeah, if you have more success with it, tell me what you did (PM me here, or send mail to my name @ yahoo or gmail)!

One piece of software I find invaluable

[Cyn]

is this: http://www.handhelds.org/

ScummVM

[Chris Pimlott]

ScummVM has a lovely Pocket PC version that is really nice and will play all your old favorite LucasArts (and a few others) games. And since they were all mouse-based, the gameplay translate well to touchscreen and stylus.

Pocket PC Magazine Awards

[fakebanana]

Pocket PC Magazine publishes the results of their annual software competition. Among the nominations for best game this year, I really enjoy Bust'em, a complex breakout style game. The GameBox games ( Classics, Gems, and Solitaire ) are also a particularly good value at $10. Finally, don't forget to download Nethack for PPC

My list

[ebbe11]

includes the following:

• TimeTTracker from RF Consulting" to keep track on how much time I use on what and whom. I work as freelancer and this program alone has paid not only for itself but also for the Pocket PC and all the gadgets associated with it.
• Tomtom Navigator 3 used with a Haicom HI-303S compact flash GPS receiver.
• Wisbar Advance 1.3.2.2 from Lake Ridge Software. This is the older freeware version that does not work with Windows Mobile 2003 SE. The version that does is payware.
• ev41, a freeware HP-41 calculator
• nPOPw freeware email program that can delete mails from the POP3-server, something that the built-in version cannot do. I use it for checking email when I'm on the road.
• Pocket Informat Pro 5 PIM program. This so much better than the built-in version.

My picks

[RevAaron]

Here is my list of must-haves for PocketPC/WinCE. I'm not quite what most would consider to be a "normal user," as I've got a lot of Unix leanings. However, I do not use a Zaurus because ... well, the software pretty much sucks. I really like real HWR, which doesn't exist on Linux and does on CE and the Newton. So PocketPC it is. But that doesn't mean you can't have your favorite Unix tools...

First, there are a lot of Unix ports from Rainer. I use his TeX distro for writing papers, Maxima w/ GNUplot and Tcl/tk GUI support for doing maths. I used to use Perl/tk, though Dialect (a really cool pythonish RAD language for CE and dekstop windows) has replaced it when I need to write an app that fits in as a CE app.

The app I spend the most time in is Squeak Smalltalk. It's not quite an application, but a development and application environment. Binary and source portable between oodles of platforms, including but not limited to CE/PPC, desktop windows/x86, linux of all flavors, Mac OS X/classic, Acorn RISC OS, etc etc.

One of the few regular PocketPC apps I use regularily is GowerPoint's uBook ebook reader. It's the best ebook reader I've found for the platform so far, and pretty good. The only thing it lacks that I wished it had was a text-to-speech feature for having books read aloud occasionally. It can read just about any format- txt, pdb/prc (both txt and html inside), html, rtf, and all of those formats zipped- and prolly others. it's nice to put a whole series- say, Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn series in one zip file with all of the books in the series. I typically buy a LIT and convert it when I have to, though sometimes I get books from fictionWise where you can sometimes get books in unencrypted formats.

Coding and reading... that leaves out the other big thing I do on my PDA (which is my computer): internettin'. (what a horrible word) I really reccomend the NetFront web browser- it's really nice. IE used to be really bad in PPC 2k and 2k2, though I'm told it's improved in 2k3 and 2k3SE, more like the IE that came with Handheld PC 2000 or vanilla WinCE 4.x, which is a very capable browser on the order of IE 5-5.5 or so. Handles most sites well and is pretty fast. However, it doesn't cut the mustard- no tabs, few and not configurable key commands, etc. For that, you need ftxBrowser, which I've bene using for years. Slick. It just embeds the IE control, so it's still IE (a good thing in the case of CE), but you've got a lot of features that are a must for me, a person who can't just do one browser page at a time. :)

There are a number of SSH clients around there. Some good ones that cost money, but there are some free ones. Rainer has one for free, though it takes a little work to get set up, but it's what I use.

A *must* for video encoding and playback

[no_such_user]

Though I use a PocketPC, I still like to avoid Windows Media. Instead, I use these tools for a nearly perfect experience:

PocketDivXEncoder is a wonderful tool, using mencoder to encode video to PDA-sized mpeg-4. Lots of options for video (including rotation) and audio, but not enough to be confusing. More importantly, audio and video stays in sync, I can estimate file size before encoding, and it supports multiple resolutions to support more than one platform.

For playback, I use BetaPlayer, a very capable (and GPL!) video player, with excellent mpeg-4 support. Full speed playback on my older 300MHz Toshiba e355 device, and it doesn't even kill my battery. Excellent support on the CoreCodec BetaPlayer Forum.

On a nearly daily basis, I use TyTool to extract last night's Daily Show from my Tivo as a 480x480 mpeg-2, then use PocketDivXEncoder to convert it to a ~64MB 320x240 mpeg4 file. Extraction, converting the .ty to mpeg-2, and encoding to mpeg-4 takes about 12 minutes on my A64 2800. I don't bother to edit out the ads, since it's very easy to skip them in BetaPlayer. Before I found this, I rarely touched my PDA. This is most certainly the KILLER APP for me.