Just bought a pocket PC, what software should I get? (and more)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3077774993&category=38331 What a bargain, eh?


I'm looking for games, OS Shells, or pretty much any kind of programs I should look into? Also, where can I get some good freeware besides freewareppc.com? Are there any good homebrew sites? Note that it's not here yet, I just bought it today.

Pocket PC RULES!!!

Resco file explorer. Think Powerdesk for your PPC. The MS explorer sucks ballz from behind.

Yame.38g Best NES emulator for PPC usage. Sounds are 100% authentic, and runs perfect on newer PPC's.

Games: Snails(its like worms but cuter), Siberian Strike X (think Ghost Pilots on steroids), Metallion (think Space Harrier), Bust'em 2 (think arkanoid on mega steroids)

www.Handango.com is THE place to buy PDA software

www.brighthand.com is also a great place to visit for any PDA need.

Electroman said:

Pocket PC RULES!!!

Resco file explorer. Think Powerdesk for your PPC. The MS explorer sucks ballz from behind.

Yame.38g Best NES emulator for PPC usage. Sounds are 100% authentic, and runs perfect on newer PPC's.

Games: Snails(its like worms but cuter), Siberian Strike X (think Ghost Pilots on steroids), Metallion (think Space Harrier), Bust'em 2 (think arkanoid on mega steroids)

www.Handango.com is THE place to buy PDA software

www.brighthand.com is also a great place to visit for any PDA need.

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Cool, thanks! I heard there's Doom running on PPC, are there other PC FPS ports (wolfenstein maybe?)? I don't think I'd use teh romzzz, I don't mess with them (.spc's are as close as I get).

Any homebrew sites you know of?

Nice steal you got there!

There are very few good freeware apps out there for the PPC, I mostly use mine for romz and I copy DVD's to my memory cards and watch them on the go.

Do a search for Pocket Themes and you will find a good theme site...I lost the link. Also Pocketmovies.com is a good source for small movies that people make. Found some funny cgi work.

Again congrats on the deal. Makes me want to look for another.

Decepticon said:

Nice steal you got there!

There are very few good freeware apps out there for the PPC, I mostly use mine for romz and I copy DVD's to my memory cards and watch them on the go.

Do a search for Pocket Themes and you will find a good theme site...I lost the link. Also Pocketmovies.com is a good source for small movies that people make. Found some funny cgi work.

Again congrats on the deal. Makes me want to look for another.

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Are there more than just themes available to customise the OS? I liked how on Palm OS there were so many different OS shells (launcher3!!) and hackmaster plugins, you could do like anything with it (my old Visor Deluxe was 'da pimp daddy).

Oh believe me, I'm gonna use this baby for movies. I'm gonna get a 128MB SD card pretty soon, and take my combo vids and other movies on the go. Man, copying whole movies to memory card... do you have CF microdrives, split the movie onto multiple cards, compress it heavily and reduce resolution and make it mono with compressed sound, or what? Just wondering.

BTW I'm selling my Sony Clie in the selling forums (though someone has dibs on it already).

There are a few really nice software utilities that work great. Try Wisbar, it's quite nice with what it does and is free (it's most used function for me is closing applications without them simply going into the background, it actually closes them). BatteryBar or BatteryPack (forget what it's called) has some great battery life readouts and stuff like that. Also check out Age of Empires for Pocket PC, probably the best done PPC game I've played. You will also have to get PocketMVP media player. Rip some DVDs, follow a DVD to PPC guide and watch your favorite movies on your PPC. I can generally fit a 2-3 hour movie on a 256 meg SD card with acceptable quality. Transformers the movie I got down to like 143 megs or so.

DanAdamKOF said:

Man, copying whole movies to memory card... do you have CF microdrives, split the movie onto multiple cards, compress it heavily and reduce resolution and make it mono with compressed sound, or what? Just wondering.

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I use super dvd ripper and compress it using the Divx 5.02 codec. I change the filesize to 160X120 and the quality I usually set to around 30 in the Divx properties box. the audio I cut down to 22k stereo and for the most part sounds good. I also encode that in MP3 format using vdub and the LAME codec.

An average movie will take up 75-100 mb at those settings and usually I copy anime episodes and fir 4 or 5 at a time.

The image quality is what can be expected.

Also use PocketMVP for your player, no otehr Divx player for the PPC is remotely worth while.

I haven't had much time to experiment with my PocketPC.

I use AstorPlayer (a mod player that plays quite a few mod formats, and it can read zipped, and rar files.) I use WinAmp to play MP3's...

I occasionally play a Bejeweled clone called "Crystal Clash". Originally got it for my girlfriend to play...

Umm... not too helpful, but there ya go.

IoriYagami n8 said:

Transformers the movie I got down to like 143 megs or so.

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I got TF: The Movie down under 100 megs using a low quality. It is still very watchable through PocketMVP however.

You really shouldn't use stereo on movies, that nearly doubles the file size. I generally rip at 200-250bps with about 22-32hz mono (i forget) and it works quite well. http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/
Check out that place for one of the best DVD to PPC guides I've found. Oh, there is also a Playstation emulator for the PPC that is actually able to run some games at 100% (Metal Slug X). That is why they have the playstation ripping guide on that site. Things such as sound and movies are often left out, so it's just the bare bones stuff, but still cool to show your friends Final Fantasy VII running on a Pocket PC. (It looks quite crisp on the LCD until you encounter gfx glitches in areas of intense 3D rendering).

I generally try to get the quality as high as I can to fit on my card. So if I have 256 megs of space I don't concern myself with cutting it down to 100. Maybe about 200 or so, and leave just a bit for some music. I'm sure I could get them even smaller if I did enough tweaking.

IoriYagami n8 said:

I generally try to get the quality as high as I can to fit on my card. So if I have 256 megs of space I don't concern myself with cutting it down to 100. Maybe about 200 or so, and leave just a bit for some music. I'm sure I could get them even smaller if I did enough tweaking.

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Yea but unfortunately my PPC is the T-Mobile phone and it won't read anything over a 128MB card

I hope it's a software limitation and when PPC 2003 phone edition comes out next month it will read up to 1GB