Fello PDA/PPC users - what programs do you find useful?

michael_w

Since I know there are at least a few pda and pocket pc users on this forum I thought it would be cool to start a thread where we could share programs and info about different tweaks and stuff. The latest one I added is RemoteAmp. A very cool program. If you have a pocket pc and play fullscreen games while listening to music it's a must have...

Here's a list of things I use:

• SPB Arkaball - cool pong style game
• SPB Pocket PC tips and Tricks - random tips and options to be able to change settings that you can't normall change
• SPB Time - nice looking clock that can be customized to be a screen saver. Also has a timer
• SPB Weather - Gives you the weather on your today screen - forcasts up to 10 days ahead
• TCPMP media player - far better than windows media player because it'll play practically everything with many many options for playback (equalizer, screen calibration, playback speed etc..)
• RemoteAmp - control winamp or iTunes on your computer with your ppc through a network. Great for gaming or having a long distance remote thing.
• Pocket SNES - good snes emulator. Access to hundreds of super nintendo games.
• FpseCE - playstation 1 emulator - play playstation games on your ppc
• dotPocket - can use on the pocket pc end for stuff like messing with the screen resolution and orientation but also for on the computer end to control your ppc from the computer. You can take ppc screenshots and movies.
• PocketDivXEncoder - used for ripping full size dvds into about 200 mb files that look great on a ppc. I have about 3 movies on my pocket pc right now. (first rip dvd to computer with dvd decrypter)

Anyone else have some good pocket pc programs? If anyone is interested in certain programs speak up and I can link where you can get them.

Shizelbs

SPB Pocket Plus is a must have. It totally changed my PPC experience from infuriating to I can't leave home without it.

michael_w

I totally forgot to list that one... I love how it actually closes things when close them and the way you can configure the today screen.

Shizelbs

No kidding. I understand why the 'x' button doesn't actually close things, but damn it is so counterintuitive.

What do you think of PocketDivxEncoder? Easy to use? Simple? How long does it take to convert. I need to start watching movies at work, and this would be great for that. What media program do you use to watch it with later?

cmy330go

Sprite Backup. Full system backup to memory card with press of one button. Ultra quick restore. LIFE SAVER!

michael_w

PocketDivXEncoder is great. First you put the dvd into your computer and rip the dvd onto your hard drive with dvd decrypter (free program). That takes about 20 - 30 minutes on my computer. After that you just run pocketdivx and select the specific vob file you want, which can be hard to pick the right one but usually it's just the largest one (sometimes two of the same size though), then adjust what quality video and audio you want and hit encode and it'll encode the movie in around 45 mins to an hour. What you can do is rip a few movies that you want with the dvd decrypter and then when you are in pocketdivx you can setup a list of things to encode. Once you have a big list of things to encode just let it run overnight or while you are at work.

What I really like about pocket divx is that since it customizes the resolution to fit your pocket pc perfectly the quality you get for the file size is great. I have downloaded a few episodes of things like family guy and futurama and comparing the length to file size the ones that I have encoded are far better.

How does sprite backup differ from the backup program already installed? My pocketpc already has an iPAQ backup thing. Only takes about 30 seconds to backup to memory card and yes having a backup has been a lifesaver a couple times now.

O yea I use tcpmp (another free program) to play back all my media files. I havn't found a normal file that it couldn't play so far.

michael_w

Here is a link to the tcpmp... http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about

I have tried other programs like auto gordian knot and virtualdub to encode my files but after trying a single dvd I wasn't really impressed. You do get more options and stuff but the fact that it took about 3 hours for the single file (instead of 45 mins) and it came out in a really crappy quality I ditched that program and went for pocketdivxencoder.

BIZILL

check out orb. i use my crappy-**** x-10 cams to stream their surveillence feeds to orb's servers. take my sprint 6700 (yeah dogg!) and go to myorb.com and login to my password and watch my house real time ('bout 10 second delay) from anywhere i go with my phone. also gives you access to folders of your choosing. your home pc becomes a host computer. you can check out your pictures, videos, mp3's and even broadcast live television to your pc if you've got a tv tuner card for your pc. very nice.

BIZILL

...........the core pocket media player (tcpmp) is the shi*. it'll play whatever cheesy windows media player 10 can't.

Shizelbs

TCPMP is certainly awesome. I've been using it non-stop since I installed it last night. Its SO intuitive. Its easy to use. The images look great on my nonVGA PDA screen. It supports landscape (widescreen) mode. And, what I find most impressive, is that it automatically mapped many of the buttons on my PDA, and to what exactly you would want them. So cool.

Thanks for the rec'.

michael_w

Well I don't usually bring back old threads but I just found a handy program I thought I'd share. It's called pocket hack master. This program lets you over/underclock your pocket pc to maximize either the speed out of your ppc or battery life. You can reduce the speed of your xscale processor or jack it way up. Right now I have mine set to automatically change between 100 mhz and 597 mhz in 6 different steps. When I'm reading stuff online and not using the processor much it backs off to save battery life.

The program is like $15 or something but... well... lets say there are ways around that

The version I downloaded also includes pocket mechanic which lets you do things like reformat in different ways, defragment your removable storage or onboard storage, registry cleaner, system cleanup, tcp/ip config, and test the limits of your sd card.

A trial version can be found be found at Pocket Gear.com or some other places. If you want to register your copy lemme know

faster100

any of these programs work on palms os? we have a palm zire 72 and would like to watch movies on it, it's only 32 megs though but can use a sd memory card to increase memory..

BIZILL

i've heard that at the end of the day, the overclock hack's benefits are immeasureable.

michael_w

I'm not sure about running some of them on Palm... maybe check out the tcpmp website and if they have a version compatible with your processor.

The overclocking might not be noticable (so far anyways) but I'm really really noticing a difference when I underclock it. I have had my pocket pc going for about the last 3 hours using bluetooth to connect to activesync so that I can use remote amp (the itunes playlist / remote delie) and the battery meter has gone down about 5%.... I've never seen this kind of battery life before the underclocking.

cmy330go

michael_w wrote:

I'm not sure about running some of them on Palm... maybe check out the tcpmp website and if they have a version compatible with your processor.

The overclocking might not be noticable (so far anyways) but I'm really really noticing a difference when I underclock it. I have had my pocket pc going for about the last 3 hours using bluetooth to connect to activesync so that I can use remote amp (the itunes playlist / remote delie) and the battery meter has gone down about 5%.... I've never seen this kind of battery life before the underclocking.

Thanks for the great tip! This is really helpful. It has helped me alot with battery life. Also thanks for mentioning Remote Amp!!!! That program is EXACTLY what I was looking for to control my HTPC!

michael_w

you have a pm coming...