Comments on Utility Program

Our expert judges for the Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards 2003 had plenty to say about the products they judged. In this issue we are publishing their comments about the nominated utility programs. The purpose of publishing these experts’ comments is to give insights about a variety of products, not to show how the judges voted. The winners and finalists of the 2003 Best Software Awards Awards can be found on our Web site (http://www.PocketPCmag.com/awards/main.asp). For the sake of brevity, we’ve included only one judge’s comment per product and edited each down to its essence.

Calculators

Jen Edwards http://(http://www.pocketgoddess.com)

RapidCalc (http://www.developerone.com) is the sort of application that should have been included with the Pocket PC’s own software. This perfect little utility pops up a handy calculator much like the Pocket PC’s virtual keyboard. CoolCalc is a close second, with its great ease of use and a fun interface that hides a great deal of calculating power.

RapidCalc is a handy pop-up calculator for the Pocket PC.

David Shier http://(http://www.bluetoothnews.com)

CoolCalc (http://www.applian.com) gets my top vote again this year for its sheer versatility, as well as ease of use. Calc98 (http://www.flosim.com) comes in second because of its features (including RPN mode) and its price: FREE. RapidCalc gets a nod for the clever idea of providing a calculator in the soft input panel.

Document Viewers

James Fee http://(http://www.aximsite.com)

People ask me what one program should they download and my first answer is always RepliGo (http://www.cerience.com). This program lets you convert any document created on a PC into a file that can be viewed on your Pocket PC. The converted document retains the appearance of the original. It works somewhat like PDF: you “print” a document using the RepliGo print driver and a RepliGo file is created. Since free RepliGo document viewers can be downloaded for several platforms from Cerience’s Web site, you can distribute RepliGo documents to anyone with a Pocket PC, Palm OS handheld, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Windows desktop or laptop PC, or other device. RepliGo will even convert Adobe PDF documents, and it’s easier to work with the RepliGo viewer than with Adobe Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC.

RepliGo lets you view a variety of document formats on your Pocket PC.

Arne Hess http://(http://www.ppcw.net)

ClearVue Suite (

www.westtek.co

m) is one of the most important Pocket PC applications I use. While the built-in Pocket Office applications are good enough for creating and viewing basic Word and Excel documents, they don’t display e-mail attachments in other formats. ClearVue opens the majority of attachments I receive.

Andrew Scott

Textmaker (http://www.softmaker.de) was a close second for me. It has an amazing set of features for a Pocket PC text editor.

File Management

Elisabeth Liddell http://(http://www.foxpop.co.uk)