I have purchased Wispar Pocket Plus and LakeRidgeSoftware's Wisbar and find them to be solid software. However, it seems like a lot of overhead for mostly just eye candy. The fact that the software minimizes instead of closes doesn't really bother me.

It seems like so many people install these software titles. Is it really just for the "wow factor" or do you really find them useful?

tmn72
Current: Pharos GPS 525, Blackberry 8703e
Still Own: HP 100lx, HP 320lx, HP Jornada 720, Palm VIIx, Palm Pilot Pro
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Previously owned Handhelds:
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Granted, there is a fair amount of eye candy appeal, but myself I like wisbar's start menu arrangement and dropdown menu structure, the way Windows does. The fact that I can use wisbar desktop to arrange/create shortcuts and virtual pages for better organization makes it handy too. Yes there is a bit of memory reduction and some latency in startup from a soft reset, but I'd rather have the enhanced functionality.

breley | Aximsite/Mobility Site Review Staff, Administrator | Judge, Smartphone & Pocket PC Best Software Awards 2008

          

Yeah. I purchased Pocket Plus a few years ago but I haven't used it very much as of late.

Paul

   

I use wisbar adv, and I can move around the startmenu faster with use only of d-pad.

I use Wisbar and Pocket Breeze which I understand is very similar to pocket plus. It is very useful to actually close rather than minimize because in the case of call of duty 2 it needs almost all availible memory to run and won't run if much else is running in the background. Being able to actually close things I don't have to soft reset before i play it. Pocket breeze provides a far surperior interface for mapping out an agenda because it combines tasks and calender items into one view. Wisbar is mostly for the wow appeal, except how I mentioned the close button and how Breley mentioned: the cascading start menu.

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I used to have Wisbar and PocketBreeze. I agree that the amount of memory it took was rather noticeable.

I still use PocketBreeze for instant access to my PIM data, I also installed the Omega BatteryPack Lite (the free one that came on Dell CD) and MagicButton. I mapped one of the BatteryPack program launcher buttons to MortButtons, this way I have quick access to my progs and StartMenu folders (this took some registry editing but it was easy).

I think I now got most of same functionality with much less wasted memory.

However WisBar does look like eye candy !

The main thing I like about WisBar is the task management (explained later), custom top bar layout, and cascading Start menu. For example, I can have WisBar just minimize Pocket Informant or my recording app when I hit the X, but fully close any other program. Also, I can close all running background tasks, or simply close everything, with just two taps. I think WisBar Lite does some of this as well.

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For those who don't want the eye-candy, but want the task management, start button, and cascading Start menu, may I recommend Wisbar Lite?

 

In latest version of SPB Pocket plus, i can uninstall few features of the software and retain only the oines i want. So, i use it only for Window close.

Satish
Hyderabad
India

I do not use either of these products (see my website for what I do use), but really, if it makes your PDA more intutitive to use for you or more productive in your usage, who cares if it is eye candy or not? You will need to make that determination for yourself.

www.AKAJohnDoe.com

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I have Pocket Plus installed for about a year now and used it A LOT.
Most frequently used items for me are the close functionality, fast application switching (menu by tap and hold of the upper right corner), portret/landscape switching (menu by tap and hold of the upper right corner), and the button for soft-reset (which helps me to prevent craches due to memory shortages I created myself in the first place ;-) )
I didn't use Pocket Plus OR PocketBreeze (past tence as I recently switched to a HP hw6910 provided by my employer for business use), I used PocketPlus + PocketBreeze + ContactBreeze + PocketInformant + Webis Flexmail + PocketWeather + TextMaker + SE_VGA + TomTom Navigator 5 + Holux uitlity + ClearVue suite + Adobe Reader for PPC