We have come across a lot of areas where people would like to know what software to have in their Pocket PC. Here we write a guide on best softwares that you must have for your pocket pc to be useful and loaded!

 
Things to consider before having a software on your pocket pc:

•  Choose a software that has many features in one (e.g.: wisbar has a task manager too so u can get both in one)
• Memory (choose the software that takes up less resources, worth for the features it gives
• Installation and use should be simple (complicated apps always sink down)
• The software should cause less or no crash to your pocket pc.
• The software should be worth for the price. (there are many free softwares for pocket pc but remember nobody will give anything good for free, if ever u get, its marketing or sometimes maybe malware too!)
• The software shouldn't steal your data

So the software which we recommend will definitely meet all the above and this guide will be updated often. All updates will be notified here.

1.WisBar Advance with Desktop

This is a very good software. Instead of telling what it does, we will first show you

                                Before                                                                       After
 

You would have heard or used StyleXP or Window Blinds on PC, then Wisbar is for Pocket PC. More than just skins, it also features a built in Task Manager, the best task manager actually by displaying the running program icons on the taskbar and you can close them by just tap & hold! And with the Desktop plug-in, you can make your today screen look just like the Desktop of your PC and can create many Virtual pages, docks and more. Everything customizable, you can play with it! Your device feels like its not in Windows mobile and has a advanced OS. You could feel the diference between Windows 98 and Windows XP. Even make it look like the upcoming Vista, look at our device’ Screenshot above.

Most (90%) of the best skins are free. Especially the Vista skin, they cannot charge as the images are copyrighted to Microsoft. We have our designer to make skins and a separate section in our forums for his releases too!

2.Pocket Breeze

If you set appointments, tasks to be displayed on the Today screen, they show only two appointments at a time and only the number of active tasks, wouldn’t it be nice to see all the tasks and appointments on tabbed pages? This is not just the feature it gives, you can add many tabs for today plug-in, it supports skins too. Can be added to a virtual page in Wisbar just like we have done. If you could see our device’ screenshot above, we have made three buttons at the bottom, the middle button ‘information’ will take to the page with pocket breeze and pocket weather plug-in as shown below.

3.Pocket Weather

As the screen shot above shows the weather images, they get updated automatically. We are using weather panel by Mars ware actually because it gives animated images. You can choose your own, pocket weather or weather panel.

We chose weather panel for another reason that their skins are more easily available from the skinners of wisbar itself.

4.Pocket Music

iPod claims to be the best music player in the world. Its obvious they have not listened to the music in our device with pocket music and tweaked earphone. Normal, default headset that you get with your device is good for speaking but for music, its really bad. We have removed the ear-piece alone and replaced it with SONY’ original high quality ear-phones which could give the best Bass & Treble effects.

 Additional features of pocket music are the equalizer, supports winamp skins, display turn off while music.

A separate guide on getting good music has been written by us as well. Be sure to check it out.

5.Resco File Explorer

The built in File manager in your pocket pc lets you do the normal functions such as cut, copy, paste.. But if your looking for some file explorer that could give you all features of a desktop explorer, then this might be what you are looking for.

Additionally it has registry plug-in to edit registry of pocket pc. Also an ftp plug-in useful for people like us having ftp servers.

6.Memory management

Pocket pc is always on thirst for memory as it has limited memory. The built in RAM we talk about. And a good memory management software is essential. We may recommend two softwares for it. Memmaid and Pocket Mechanic. Memmaid features scanning and cleaning of unwanted files, registry and mail attachments. This can be done manually without the software though. Additionally it has a notification queue duplicates checker but a duplicate will mostly not occur. And this software can show the running programs list and memory usage of your pocket pc in a tree view kind. One good tweak this software gives is the movement of ie cache folder to storage card from the default main memory. We could show you the registry setting to do it. But for beginners, we do not recommend editing the registry. However take the trial version and do the setting alone and then you can un-install the software but the tweak remains. This might be a cheap trick but its never ill-legal.

 Another software is Pocket Mechanic. This software has more features and serves as a mechanic for your memory cards basically. Has benchmarking, defragmenting and much more for your memory cards.

7.Octeo’ Quick notes

The default notes application that comes with your device is really bad or very basic. Wont it be good to have the notes on the today screen itself, where you can write and save and move between notes with just a single tap? This software can help you then. It’s basically a today screen plug-in and you can set the size.

 The best use could be like us. We have it in a Virtual page of wisbar desktop and set the size to full screen kind. See the screen shot below, if you see the first screen shot we show our device with wisbar desktop, you find three buttons at the bottom. The third button ‘scratchpad’ will take to the virtual page where we have Octeo Quick notes plug-in to full size.

8.SPB Backup

You’ll never know when your device crashes. Its always better to have a good Backup software. We can recommend you SPB Backup. You may also give a try to Sprite Backup. But when we tried Sprite backup, it screwed the device’ messaging feature after a restore where the device never receives any message. This was a bug and seems to be fixed now but we love SPB backup for we never had any issues with it yet.

 So what is a backup application, in short, a backup taken at a time will be around 10mb. So if you make a hard-reset to your pocket pc you loose all the data bringing it back to Factory condition. When you restore the backup, a 3 minutes automated process will bring your pocket pc back to the condition as it was before. Doesn’t that sound good?

9.Internet Browsers

Connectivity is the main reason for the existence of a pocket pc. And without a good browser, its really sad. There are many browsers like NetFront, Opera.. But we may recommend Thunder hawk! This is an amazing browser which could really speed your browsing experience. You would have heard that firefox is faster than ie. Have you noticed any visible difference? We don’t think so. But you can feel it with in your pocket pc when using default ie and thunder hawk. No wonder they have chosen the right name.

 We think they use some technology like if you request a page, first it gets loaded in their server and then the page is compressed to pocket pc’ size to be downloaded at slower speeds too so you may find it faster. With normal gprs connection in your pocket pc you may get an average of 4kbps, but when you use Thunder hawk, it feels like its over 20kbps. The speeds we mention are transfer speeds and not connection speeds.

 But beware, they use a separate server to load all your pages instead of direct loading. So always keep in your mind of not using more secure sites like PayPal. They will/may not steal your passwords or data, but its always up to you to be cautious.

10.Ultimate Theft Alert

Last but not the least. You probably know already what this software for. Its our own creation. Having your pocket pc devices priced at an expensive 500$, a small amount of $12.99USD to help you retrieve it back when stolen should really be good. You’ll never know when you will loose your device. More than the money, it could be the data it holds. So we recommend you to use our software too.

Additional softwares for pocket pc

SPB Finance

This is a software that lets you manage your financial accounts. Not a must have for all but if you really need some personal assistant to hold your account balances and give good transaction reports, you might as well need this software.

eBook readers

A lots to choose from. Best ones are MobiPocket reader, Adobe pdf reader, Microsoft’ eReader, iSilo. Choose it by the format you require if you are really a book reader on the move.

Keyboard and Dialer skins

Resco keyboard is one which skins your keyboard. But there are separate cabs available for skinning your keyboard. So instead of having a base software for keyboard and then applying skins over it, you can save memory by using the separate cabs that skins the default keyboard. These cabs should e available elsewhere easily but if you really need them, get it from our forums.

 Dialer skins are also usually the same.

Dictionaries

Having a dictionary in your pocket pc may really be useful. We personally like Wordbook and you may also try Lexionary. And there are other translating dictionaries also available. Not worth mentioning here as everyone may not require it.

Related Articles: Bypass Vista Activation the Microsoft' way! Read more..

Disclaimer: We are not paid in any kind to recommend any software. This is a review on using the various pocket pc softwares. Limited to our knowledge we might have missed some very good software or added a software that was not good too. If so you find any please report to us here.

Conclusion: Hope so the guide has served you a purpose. This guide will be updated as mentioned before. Once its updated, it will be notified in our forums here. If you wish to thank or comment about this guide, do it below.