Quick Tips

The real Pocket PC experts are the people who use the devices day-in, day-out to make each day easier, their work more productive, and life more fun. If you have a short tip (100-300 words) you'd like to share with your fellow Pocket PC users, send it in and we'll consider it for publication in this column. If we select your tip for publication, we will send you a free copy of our Back Issue CD, which has the first three years of Pocket PC magazine in Microsoft Reader format. Sorry, but we cannot substitute other products for this CD.

E-mail your tips to: Rich@PocketPCmag.com

In addition to hand writing recognition capability, the Pocket PC comes with a "soft keyboard, "which displays a little QWERTY key board on the bottom of the screen and lets you tap out your data entry. The keys are very small, and it's easy to miss the one you're aiming at. Fortunately, you can increase the size of the keys. Make sure that Keyboard is selected in the Input method drop-down list. Then from the Start menu, select Settings and then Input. Then tap on the Large Keys button and tap OK (see Screen 1).

Screen 1: You can configure the Pocket PC's built-in soft keyboard to display larger keys.

To access the numbers and symbols that are no longer displayed with the larger keys, tap on the "123" key located in the upper left of the soft keyboard display (Screen 2).

Screen 2: With the soft keyboard set to display large keys, numbers and other symbols are located on a screen accessed by tapping the "123" key.

Finally, if you're interested in alternatein put methods from third-party developers, check out Access Panel (www.developerone.com), Fitaly (www.fitaly.com), or the WordLogic Keyboard (www.wordlogic.net).

Intel's XScale processors have spawned a cottage industry in "overclocking" software. The XScale CPUs are designed to be able to run at more than one speed. The benefit is that CPU speed can be scaled to the task at hand: higher speeds for graphics-intensive or multimedia applications, lower speeds for spreadsheets and word-processing. Overclocking software overrides the built-in governors on the speed, pushing the processor to the max at all times. In theory, this won't hurt anything, but manufacturers are warning that it may in some cases. Overclocking can also void your warranty. You may still weigh the risks and decide to overclock, but you should read this InfoWorld article first (www.infoworld.com/article/03/02/25/HNoverclock_1.html?hardware).

For second opinion, we went to Mack Baggette of PocketPCTechs.com. Here's what he had to say:

"My basic take on overclocking is to give the option to the users and let them decide, knowing the possible risks involved. In overclocking a handheld unit there is almost no risk of physically damaging the unit. The extra power consumption doesn't come close to the power consumption of things like the screen, backlight, memory chips, etc. In regards to the heat, it is negligible as there is much more heat generated from the power circuits for things such as charging and backlighting than anything else. The worst thing that can happen is that you will have to hard reset your unit and lose all your data and programs. If you are playing with overclocking, just make sure you have good backups."