Spb Software House’s Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks 

Since the inception of Windows CE-based devices, users have always looked for ways to improve their use of their device.  Whether it is a simple trick to doing something more quickly or a more involved “tweaking” of the device, many users have and will continue to go to great lengths to improve their experience.  Today, with the expansion of numerous Pocket PC centered websites and vast amounts of information available online, finding these tricks and tips has become tedious at best.  To complicate matters, it is not uncommon to get conflicting information on how to do something from two different sources. 

Spb Software House has addressed both the problem of finding tips and tricks as well as their accuracy in one simple application, Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks.  This simple and easy-to-use application provides over 200 tips and tricks that can be used on any Pocket PC based device.  Further, the tips and tricks have been collected for a pool of ten professional Pocket PC authors, assuring accuracy and reliability of the tips.  It is an application that many will ask why it was not thought of until now.  Fortunately Spb Software House did and has provided an excellent resource for Pocket PC owners. 

The application itself is a little hefty at just over 4MB and can be installed via ActiveSync to either the Pocket PCs Main Memory or to a Storage Card.  Once installed, Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks presents users with 12 categories such as Bluetooth, Pocket Office, Personalization and PIM to name a few (Figure 1).

Figure 1:  The main display of Tips & Tricks 

To see tips and tricks related to one of the categories, users simply tap the category.  The author of the categories tips and tricks is show as well as the list of tips (Figure 2).  By tapping the tip or trick they are interested in performing, users are presented detailed text of what the tip or trick does and how to perform it (Figure 3).  Although the number of tips varies from category-to-category, all of them are well documented and written in an easy-to-follow way.

If users are unsure of where a tip or trick may be categorized, they have the option of using the built-in search function.  This allows users to search for specific terms and will display all of the results regardless of the category in which they reside (Figure 4).  This flexibility makes Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks a truly user friendly application and eliminates the need of having to remember which category a tip is in at a later time. 

Figure 4:  The Search function allows users to search for any term through the application 

As mentioned before, each of the tips and tricks come from well known authors in the Pocket PC community.  By enlisting these authors from the beginning, Spb Software House offers instant credibility and reliability to Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks.  Users do not have to worry about finding contradictions in information or untried or unproven tips.  Further, each author’s biographical information and contact information is listed in the Author’s section of the Tool menu (Figure 5).  It should be noted that most of the authors are Microsoft MVPs, adding further credibility to an already credible product. 

Figure 5:  Each author’s biographical information is found in the Authors section 

As with the other Spb Software House products, Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks is backed by one of the more forward thinking developers in the Windows Mobile arena.  The application is backed by online support that is both rapid in reply and accurate in their resolutions to issues.  In test support questions sent to Spb Software House’s support staff, each request was responded to within three hours. 

Spb Pocket PC Tips & Tricks is available on the Spb Software House website for $19.95 (US).  A demonstration version of the product is also available from the site which is limited to 1 tip per category.  For more information and to purchase, visit Spb Software House at http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com.

Clinton Fitch
Senior Editor
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! (http://www.clintonfitch.com)
HPC:Factor (http://www.hpcfactor.com)