By Tom Gibson 
Technical Editor, Handheld PC Magazine 

We're well into 1998 now and with the release of Windows CE 2.0, the Palm PC and Auto PC, on-line activity is heating up again. New sites are coming online and some of the old standbys are being rejuvenated. For those of us living in the colder climes, winter seems to be a time when some good software is developed. I guess when there are a couple feet of snow outside and temperatures that make your teeth chatter, there is nothing better to do than write software and breathe life into your website. This brings us to my pick as hot site this issue.

www.inet-1.com/~spamman/wince.htm

Chris Russell, A.K.A. SpamMan, lives in Utah in the U.S. He can't ride his motorcycle through 3 feet of snow, so he worked on his site and did a little programming. His site looks great and he has 3 freeware offerings for us in the form of RegEditCE, SpaceHogCE and PocketSwap.

RegEditCE is a Registry editor for Windows CE. The Windows CE Registry contains information on the programs you have installed on the H/PC. Beta 2 supports the ability to browse the entire registry, as well as being able to add, delete, or modify keys, string values, or DWORD values. I've left the above explanation technical on purpose. If you don't understand it, don't use RegEditCE. Using it without knowing what you are doing can trash your H/PC to the point that you will have to re-initialize the machine and set it to factory condition.

SpaceHogCE is a simple utility that lists every file on your H/PC sorted by size. Using SpaceHogCE you can quickly determine which files are hogging up all the space on your H/PC, select the files you want to nuke, and delete them all without having to go find each file in its folder. Version 1.01 adds better shell integration (shell icons), the ability to filter out files that reside in the ROM (why should we care how much stuff is in the ROM? It doesn't take any of our precious space), and the ability to execute any file in the list by double-tapping it. Like RegEditCE above, this utility is not a toy and it can do serious damage to your H/PC if you delete a file that is needed for a program to run, but in the correct usage can help optimize your H/PC.

PocketSwap was mentioned in the Jan/Feb 98 issue, page 28. It is a utility that will automatically change your wallpaper for you. Chris has also been nice enough to provide links to pages that have wallpaper suitable for use with PocketSwap. Be sure to give SpamMan's site a visit.

www.winceonline.com/

Windows CE Online is a site that has a lot downloads and links to online news stories concerning Windows CE. This site is one to place in your favorites folder.

www.craigtech.co.uk/pie/

Craig Peacock has joined the fray and put up a section of his site that is Pocket Internet Explorer friendly. Craig writes for Handheld PC Magazine and he also has one of the better sites for Windows CE, and the addition of the MPIE optimized page rounds out the site.

www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7378/

The Windows CE Lair is a nice site that has links to software news and commercial software reviews. This site has a liberal use of frames so you may not want to visit it with your H/PC, but it is worth checking out. The site features an alphabetized listing of all the features.

www.wincecity.com

Windows CE City is another cool site that features tips and tricks along with links to other sites. It also has downloads, reviews and news stories. There is a section for discussion with topics including machine-specific to general Windows CE. There is also a developers section.

There has been a lot of talk in the newsgroups and some pages showing up on the web about the Palm PC. One of the first pages to show up is an article by Terho Uimonen writing for Info World. You can see the article at www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?971212.wgryphon.htm

See below for other places to find information and seek assistance with your H/PC.

Until next time, happy browsing and I'll see you OnLine!