Gupta's Greats

This issue of Pocket PC magazine is devoted to making travel easier and more fun. In that spirit, I'll look at a few travel-related applications and a couple of games. But before I do, I'd like to mention a couple of products we reviewed in earlier issues. The first is Portable Guide (www.pocketpcmag.com/Mar01/tourguide.stm), an excellent guide to major North American cites, for Pocket PC users. The second is True Term (www.pocketpcmag.com/Mar01/guptas.stm), an editable language translation dictionary for Pocket, Palm-size and Handheld PC Pros. Tube, a subway guide for Pocket PC users, is reviewed in this issue. Now, let's look at this issue's Gupta's Greats.

V Rally

Race like a Pro on your Pocket PC

V Rally puts you in the driver's seat of world rally championship cars, including the Peugeot 306 MAXI, Mitsubishi Lancer WRC, Ford Escort WRC and Subaru Impreza WRC. There are three race modes: practice, arcade and championship. The practice mode is for training. In arcade mode, the player has to compete against ten different players in three stages. In the championship mode, you compete in an entire race season of twenty races in ten different countries for your chance to be the world champion.The ten tracks are set in ten different locations: Indonesia, African Safari, Corsica, New Zealand, French Alps, United Kingdom, Greece, Argentina, Italy and Sweden.

I tested this game on a Casio EM-500. The Casio Pocket PC's built-in game pad made it easy to control the game. V Rally has the option of placing a virtual game pad on the screen, particularly useful for the HP Jornada Pocket PC, which lacks a dedicated game button. When you first start, the game only lets you drive on one racetrack. More become available to you, based on your success in the races.

V Rally puts you in the driver's seat of world rally cars, racing on ten different world-class courses ­ all on your Pocket PC.

The graphics in the game are top notch, but compromises were made to fit this on the Pocket PC. In some desktop PC car racing games, every time you collide with another car or object, your car is damaged and less able to compete. Eventually, you're 100% damaged and out of the race. I'd love to see that in V Rally.

V Rally can be set to play (display menus, etc.) in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and English. A free demo and a full commercial version of the program are available on the Palmtop Software Web site (www.palmtopsoftware.com). V Rally is available for the Pocket PC only and can be purchased for $29.99.

AlarMe

Wake up on time with AlarMe

Turn your Windows Powered device into a travel alarm clock and 24-hour timer with this simple utility. AlarMe displays the date and time in a large digital format. The clock portion displays time in 12- or 24-hour formats, and you can set an optional hourly chime. You can change the color of the digits or background according to your preference. Up to 100 alarms can be set with AlarMe.

AlarMe turns your Palm-size, Pocket, or Handheld PC into a travel alarm clock and 24-hour timer.

The alarm will keep on ringing until you tap on the red "Stop" icon. Handheld PC users can also press the "Enter" key to stop an alarm. You can pause an alarm for a user-definable period by tapping on the "Snooze" icon (top of the screen, the little guy in the blue hat). H/PC users can hit the spacebar to do this. You can use the Options screen to adjust the volume of the alarm and to select a different sound for each alarm. Any .wav file in any directory can be used.