MemMaid 2.0

Reviewed by: Bryan Eley (breley)

Product: MemMaid 2.0 (Build 95)

Developer/Vendor: DinarSoft (http://www.dinarsoft.com)

Price: $19.99 (US)

Rating: 5 out of 5

*Special thanks to  DinarSoft for providing a copy of MemMaid 2.0 for review.*

 Summary:
Security, Memory and Performance. MemMaid is a tool that scans and detects all the files and registry entries that consume your memory and removes them leaving your Pocket PC's memory clean like never before.

This is the swiss army knife for your device. MemMaid is the only tool you will ever need to manage and clean your Pocket PC's memory.

Testing Environment: Dell Axim X51v A012

If you’ve every seen the US television show “Clean House”, you’ve doubtless seen Niecy Nash scurrying about with her staff taking a slovenly home and turning it into a trendy showroom.  DinarSoft’s MemMaid 2.0 fulfills a similar function in the world of Windows Mobile devices, with the capability of turning your device from a slow, disorganized, full of dangling notification and cluttered memory (to name a few) device into a fast, responsive, internally tidy unit—but without having to suffer the programmatic equivalent of yard sales, irritated crew members, and foolishly stubborn home owners.

MemMaid 2.0 represents the latest update to DinarSoft’s system utility application with build 95 just released in mid-July. 

Installation:
Installing the trial version entitles the user to try MemMaid for 15 days, and registration of the app merely requires one to tap on “About” and “Register”.  Application installation requires about 904 KB of space.

 Overview:

MemMaid offers some incredibly handy tools for optimizing the Windows Mobile operating system, divided into six primary sections:

1. Cleaner, comprised of Quick Cleaner, Advanced Cleaner and Reclaim RAM
2. Databases, with Notification Queue, Registry, Database Usage and Extensions
3. Tweaks, with System Tweaks, Applications Cache, Information and DLL Optimizer
4. Startups, consisting of Startup Items, Startup Services, and Today Plugins
5. Storage, with Storage Usage, File Finder, CAB installer, Installed Apps and Card Tools
6. Process, with Running Programs, CPU usage and Running Processes

At startup, the user is offered the option of choosing between “Protected” or “Advanced” settings.  If you choose unwisely, MemMaid offers the option to switch back via checking/unchecking Tools->Settings-->”Enable Advanced Features”.

With these tools, users can much more precisely craft their device’s behavior to maximize its functionality in terms of memory space and speed/response time.

Reclaim RAM has its own standalone shortcut, so users can simply launch that function from the start menu to free up RAM space.

Selecting an item shows when the notification typically runs and what the event represents.  Inexperienced users may want to be careful here, as certain esoteric items’ function, like “CALENDAR.EXE POOM: 123456 2007 8 15…” , might not be immediately obvious.  MemMaid’s Help File recommends only removing those entries known to be unimportant or that you absolutely don’t want.  There is also an Add button to add a notification for a specific program (essentially launching the given program) along with the the Event to attach the notification to, such as “Run at time”, “The system time changed”, Data synchronization changed, “AC power is turned on” and a number of others to choose from.  If “Run at time” is chosen, there will be  Date/Time entry to select if you’ve chose “Run at time”.  Once added, you can specify additional program parameters.  So, this powerful little sub-application more or less functions as a “program scheduler”.  Next to the Notification Queue’s Add button is an arrow that when pressed, allows users to Rebuild the Notification Queue database or to Recreate Activesync,  which rebuilds activesync queue entries, which can be handy for those times where normally a user would have to soft reset the mobile device to get Activesync working again.

Selecting Database Usage lists the total space used by your databases, individual database groups and their size, and the sections within each database along with the size of those sections. For those brave folks knowledgeable in direct editing of databases, MemMaid offers the ability to browse a selected database and prune a given record ID within it in here.  Users can also safely save and load the various databases (in XML format) before or after making changes.

In the Extensions section, users can edit, delete or even add new extensions for various file types, so if you’d prefer one of your audio or video files to be opened by something other than Windows Media Player, this would be the place to change the association/class. 

Tweaks offers options to optimize browser settings for Pocket IE and Opera in the System Tweaks section, and the Optimize function in this section allows for presets for speed and memory (or extreme speed or extreme memory) for these applications.  The presets, aside from the simplicity of changing your device browser settings for your current performance needs, can help provide a benchmark for customizing settings, especially if you change the location of PIE Temp, Cookies and History from Main Memory to an SD or CF card in the Applications Cache dropdown.

1. Green: Reported by users to be safe to move
2. Yellow: Today plugin DLLs that may allow themselves to be relocated to a memory card
3. Black: May be possible to move, but be careful!

The one drawback to moving DLLs is that you will need to relocate them back to main memory for the associated program you are attempting to uninstall.  Failure to do so may cause problems in the removal process, so this could be a nuisance if a number of program DLLs have been moved. 

Startups handles those programs and services initiated during a soft reset and has three categories: Startup Items, Startup Services and Today Plugins. In the listings for the items under these categories, each component has either a gray or green icon next to it, indicating whether or not the component will start when the device is started or reset.  I noticed a typo or two in the help file under the Can I enable/disable entries in this list? that reads “Green icon beside the program means this program is entry is enabled and will not run when you restart your device…”, but I believe a green icon means the program WILL run when the device is restarted (gray icon means the program WON’T restart on a reset, FYI). Startup Items has a nice feature where a user can specify other programs to run, so by golly if you’re dead set on playing Solitaire every time you restart the device, MemMaid 2.0 lets you do just that.  For the Startup Items and Today Plugins users can also specify the order in which these items launch, and can also select and modify certain settings/options features of a Today screen plugin, much in the way you can from the program itself.  So, if I select Weatherpanel in the Today Plugins, and click on the little wrench icon (called Options) in the control button bar below, it activates the Settings section of Weatherpanel.

Startup Services allows a user to activate/deactivate a system service, and also via the Options button change the startup mode to either Auto Start or Manual Start.

Storage is the nexus of all items relating to file space, location, installation status, what cabs are on the system, plus there is a File Finder tool and a very useful Card Tools feature.  First on the list is Storage Usage, which establishes file/folder sizes on the device in tree format.  At the top level, any storage cards are listed, followed by folders on the root (/) of your device.  Each listing shows how much space is used in each section, and as a user expands a memory card listing or folder, the constituent files and folder space usage is shown.  Files sizes are only shown as an aggregate, so in the case of my Fonts folder, I am only shown the sum of the 6 font files, not the individual file sizes.  However, by clicking the “Explore” button, File Explorer is launched and I can examine the files individually.  Another feature a user can use while in the Storage Usage section is the Delete button, though I’d recommend using that judiciously, as one would not want to inadvertently eliminate for example one’s music or picture folders and their contents!  Another button, Chart, shows a pie chart representation of the folder view, giving a quick visual clue as to which files/folders occupy the most space. By selecting the Options button in the top right of the MemMaid tool, users are given the choice of selecting a custom explorer application, perhaps something like Total Commander, Resco File Explorer, Wizcode Virtual Explorer and so forth.  Other settings here include the option to show files on Built-In storage and/or External cards, showing ROM and/or non ROM files, and choosing 2D or 3D for the pie chart.

File Finder allows a user to search for a file name, either by specifying a specific name or by using wildcard for name or extension, and the ability to set a file size limit less or greater than a defined size in Bytes, KB or MB.

Cab Installer lists all CAB files on the device and storage cards, and you have the option of exploring the folder they are located in via the Explore button, deleting via Delete, or installing the CAB file via the Install button.  The Installed Apps module generates a tree list of all applications installed on the device, along with the app’s file size.  Expanding the [+] next to an installed app’s icon shows the install date, registry location, Start Menu location, actual application location, and the location of other associated files, such as DLLs.  All in all, an extremely useful summary of information, particularly if a program is known to occasionally uninstall inelegantly, as noting the information about that specific program here can enable more effective manual removal.

Take a close look at the Installed Apps screen.  Notice how each program item installed has its icon representing it.  MemMaid provides a solution that for me has been a quibble of mine with Windows Mobile 5, namely the lack of an identifying icon for any installed programs.

In Process, there are options to deal with Running Programs, CPU Usage, and Running Processes.

The Running Programs section shows what programs are currently running, the amount of memory used by each application, installation source, program path, actual name of the executable, number of threads and number of modules (typically DLL files and their respective locations).  There are three main buttons on this page: Activate, which essentially brings the selected program to the fore and activate it. For units with WM5 & WM6, the Memory button will offer the user a choice to compact the memory used by the program selected or else all programs running.  Here you can see from the screencap a comparison of memory used before and after.

 

The "Terminate" button allows you to Kill a process gracefully, and "Close" closes the process peacefully.  From a philosophical standpoint I’m not sure what the difference between terminating gracefully or peacefully is, but maybe MemMaid executes a binary Pirouette followed by a Tour en l'Air before stopping the processes gracefully, whereas closing peacefully entails the use of a digital barbiturates?  Someone debug that and get back to me…

CPU Usage shows all system processes in addition to programs and their respective CPU usage as a relative percentage.  Similar to the Running Programs, selecting an item shows installation source, program path, actual name of the process, number of threads and number of modules loaded. Inclusion or exclusion of the time used by MemMaid to calculate the usage can be turned on or off via a checkbox.

In Running Processes, similar functions to Running Programs can be found here, with the ability to compact one or all processes, or else terminate.  Unlike the Termination options in Running Programs, the Running Processes termination function simply asks for confirmation before closing the selected process.

One last observation…MemMaid’s Help Files are superb.  In any section, clicking Tools-->Help will bring up the Help file specific to the section you are currently in, so you don’t have to laboriously navigate through a single large file of help.  If you’re in the Cleaner section and click Help, you will get Cleaner-associated help.

Overall Impression:

• The application components are logically grouped and easily accessible
• Very thorough, very comprehensive list of modifiable system attributes that can improve speed, responsiveness, space and adjust system startup behaviors.  A very good tool for those who wish to push the envelope in mobile device performance, or just keep the device humming in a tidy manner
• Excellent Help Files to guide users
• Sensible safe (Protected) and experienced (Advanced) mode options to suit user types