Database Info

TIP: PPC2k / Palm OS-related communication tips

Here follows a quick follow-up to my previous, big, Pocket PC Thoughts-frontpaged article on Windows Mobile vs. other platforms communication. In here, I elaborate a bit more on Palm OS vs Windows Mobile and intra-WindowsCE communication issues. I also explain what PeaceMaker Pro can be used for.
You should definitely read this article if you want to know how you can exchange data with the oldest Pocket PC brands. This information may prove VERY handy (and even life/business-saving!) if you meet people that (still) use these kinds of Pocket PC’s.
Also, it contains some additional, Palm OS-related tips and tricks that may prove REALLY useful if you need to do any kind of data / file transfer with Palm users - for example, easily transferring Pocket Word / Word Mobile or Notes files.
1. Palm OS and Pocket PC interoperability via infrared
What I’ve stated about the data transfer issues between Windows Mobile and Palm OS (please DO read the above-linked article - I won't repeat everything I've stated in there) holds true when the data is exchanged over Infrared instead of Bluetooth. This means you can beam the same types of files and data in both directions as is the case with Bluetooth.
There are some cases, however, where a third-party application, PeaceMaker Pro by Conduits, may be of help. In the following, I elaborate on this application a bit more.
First, if you still happen to have a Pocket PC 2000 (or a Handheld PC / a Palm-size PC) device, you will need to turn to PeaceMaker Pro, which is meant to help in these situations. It’s the only way to transfer any (!) kind of data between a PPC 2000 and a Palm device.
Second, if you plan to directly transfer .PWI (Notes) or .PSW (Pocket Word; the built-in “word processor” of pre-WM5 operating systems; I’ll elaborate on WM5 promptly) files from a post-Pocket PC 2000 device to a Palm, you may also need this application.
Note that the latter may be easily circumvented on post Pocket PC 2000 platforms because these files will be inevitably converted to simple textual Memos (textual means all the inline graphics in Notes files and all formatting in Pocket Word files will be gone) by just
with Pocket Word (or, for that matter, Word Mobile under WM5), open the file in Pocket Word / Word Mobile, go to (under pre-WM5) Tools / File / Save Document As (under WM5, Menu / File / Save As…) and, choosing Plain Text (Document) in the Type drop-down list, save the file as a textual file. Make sure you answer No to the following question so that the conversion does take place.
With Notes, open the file, bring up the on-screen keyboard, click Ctl and, then, A so that everything is selected. Now, tap-and-hold the screen and select Copy in the context menu. Now, create a new file in Pocket Word / Word Mobile, Paste the contents of the just-populated clipboard into it and save it as a plain textual (TXT) file in the above-explained way.
This way, you will be able to safely beam the newly created TXT file to a Palm OS device by just tap-and-holding the file in the File list view of Pocket Word / Word Mobile and choosing Beam File...
These cases are summarized in the next two charts:
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Post-PPC 2000:
Note that under WM5 you can’t use Peacemaker’s contact sending capabilities: the DLL plug-in file doesn’t seem to be signed. This is clearly visible in the following two times two screenshots (taken on the WM5 HTC Wizard and Dell Axim x51v): HTC Wizard-1 HTC Wizard-2; x51v-1 x51v-2.
1.1 What’s wrong with the PPC 2000 operating system?
As can clearly be seen, the Pocket PC 2000 operating system, infrared-wise, is vastly different from later Pocket PC operating systems. Its infrared communication is non-standard. This, unfortunately, also has a bad effect on its capabilities of communicating with Pocket PC’s running later operating system versions. In the following section, I elaborate on this question a bit more.
2. Pocket PC 2000 vs. newer Pocket PC / Windows Mobile operating systems
If you’ve ever seen a Pocket PC 2000 or 2002 device, you’ve seen a program called “Infrared Receive” on it and wondered what’s it for, particularly because the latter operating system, Pocket PC 2002, was already able to auto-receive beams without your having to explicitly ask it to do so. What’s the point in Pocket PC 2002’s having the “Infrared Receive” program, then? you may ask.
The answer is that using it was the only way to receive both files and PIM data on the Pocket PC 2002 (PPC2k2) operating system from PPC 2k devices. While, on PPC2k2 devices, you can receive any kinds of PIM data or files from any other, later PPC / Windows Mobile devices without touching anything (assuming the auto-receiving beams was enabled in Settings / Connections / Beam), this wasn’t the case with PPC2k devices’ beaming information: the only way of receiving it was explicitly starting “Infrared Receive”.
Later (post-PPC2k2; that is, WM2003+) operating systems’ not having “Infrared Receive” also means they are unable to receive any kind of data from PPC2k devices any more.
This case is shown in the following chart:
What about the opposite direction, that is, later operating systems trying to beam information / files to PPC2k, you may ask. Well, the situation is a bit better in this case: up to (and including) WM2003SE, you could beam anything from these devices to PPC2k-based Pocket PC’s (of course, as PPC2k has no auto-receiving capabilities, you must start “Infrared Receive” on them to receive any beams). WM5, however, no longer supports this kind of transfer – that is, it’s impossible to beam anything from a WM5 device to a PPC2k one. This is shown in the next chart:
Note that PeaceMaker Pro does NOT allow for communicating with later (WM2003+) operating systems - it's only meant for communicating with Palm OS.

REVIEW: IBE Group releases IBE Backup, the worst backup ever written for the PPC

IBE Group has been pretty busy churning out applications and games the last year. I’ve closely followed these and published some articles / reviews on some of them (see for example the IBE Mail and Star Invader reviews). I’ve, in general, found their games and applications useless in almost every respect.
Their latest title, IBE Backup (current, tested version: 1.1, build 1.0.0.1658), is, as you may have already guessed, a backup application.
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Availability
The central homepage of IBE Group still doesn’t list the application; PocketGear does. There is a 3-day trial version of the application there; the commercial version costs a whopping $24.95, which is, in cases, considerably more expensive than all the other Pocket PC backup applications, except for Sprite Backup. Let’s see how it fares against them!
The user interface
The backup app tries to mimic the well-known Spb Backup very hard and, for a beginner, the reseblance may even cause him or her to actually believe he's using Spb Backup. Don’t know whether the IBE Group folks have bought the rights to do this (I seriously doubt it) or whether the Spb folks are actually happy to have such a bad title so similar to their quality backup product (I doubt this too).
Too bad the English of the application is much worse than that of – there are major typos and mistakes in the English in almost every dialog. And the underlying engine.. let’s spend some time on the engine itself.
The underlying backup engine
In a word: useless. It’s, first, very slow to back up – it needs almost an order of magnitude more time to back up a Pocket PC than the (in cases, MUCH cheaper) alternatives.
It can’t back up password-protected Pocket PC’s in scheduled mode either, which isn’t a problem with most of the alternatives any more.
It has no desktop-side for example file / registry extractor utilities either, unlike several of the alternatives.
The problems don’t end at this, however. The worst is still coming:
Showstopper, REALLY BAD problems
The restoration of the Registry seems to be completely broken. Seemingly, it does restore everything (which you can also check out by exporting the restored Registry and diff’ing it with the original one); for some strange reason, however, the Pocket PC just doesn’t see the restored contents. This applies to almost everything depending on the Registry and you can check it yourself by, say, checking out whether the contents of
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Shell\TaskSwitch]
(that is, the Start menu history – the list of last-started five applications) is visible to the Pocket PC. Or, if the backlight settings, [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ ControlPanel\BackLight], are visible (they aren’t either).
What is more, third-party registry keys under [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\] (for example, those of Mobile Stream’s USB Modem) aren’t even restored. Give it a try if interested: get the trial version of USB Modem, install it and start it to see the trial countdown indeed starts. Backup your device with say, Spb Backup (and, of course, IBE Backup) and, upon restoration, make sure you let the device’s clock stay at the factory default. After the Spb Backup restoration (because the Registry will still have the related info), USB Modem will (correctly) refuse to work, unlike after the restoration with IBE Backup.
And, of course, this is just one application (of the many) where the problematic Registry restoration causes problems - you will have a LOT of problems with other apps / games if you do restore with this app.
Benchmarks
In the following benchmark chart, I’ve listed the benchmark results of backup and restore operations on three of my test Pocket PC’s. I’ve compared the backup/restore times and the file sizes to the latest (dated 01/30/2007) Sunnysoft 4-series Backup Manager build and the latest, version 1.5.5 of Spb Backup. As can clearly be seen, while IBE Backup produces about 3% smaller backup files than Spb, its back-up time is more than five times larger.
(n/t means „not tested“)
Verdict
As with all the other (tested) IBE Group products, avoid this title like plague. It’s not even worth checking it out: it’s that bad.
Unfotunately, IBE Group seems to become the second Emcon Emsys Technologies on the Pocket PC. (For anyone that doesn’t know what they are famous for: they have been probably the worst game developers for the Pocket PC. Make a generic search for ‘Emcon’ here to see it for yourself. Start with, say, this thread.) That is, downright useless applications and games priced high.
Recommended links
In addition to my previous IBE Group reviews, the Pocket PC Backup Bible is highly recommended.

The definitive guide to playing (early) Sierra games on Windows Mobile

Many "oldtimers" recognize the name of the game developer / publishing company Sierra. They have published several games since 1978.
As their games are, generally, very cool, there have been a lot of efforts to make an interpreter to run their files, as is the case with other, well-known adventure companies like Lucasfilm (ScummVM) and Magnetic Scrolls (see related article HERE)
There are two interpreters for Sierra games: PocketSarien and FreeSCI. In this guide, I explain everything you'll ever need to know about these titles. I also recommend the generic forum for all platforms at AGI Games (despite the name, it also discusses SCI games and interpreters!) for a quick read after reading this guide.
PocketSarien
One of the results of these efforts was the multiplatform Sierra Sarien (which has, in the meantime, merged with ScummVM; interestingly, the Scumm compatibility list doesn’t list any Sierra titles), which is able to run all Sierra games (and, more generally, games written using the same AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine) released in the eighties (but not later).
Sarien also has a free Pocket PC port, which runs on all Pocket PC's (even MIPS/SH3 Pocket PC 2000 ones).
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It also runs on VGA devices, but without the on-screen keyboard, as can be seen in the following screenshots: 1 2 3 4 5).
It should be pointed out that PocketSarien will not run games released in and after 1990. That is, it won't run anything in the Larry series starting with part 2, in the Space Quest series starting with part 3, in the King's Quest series starting with part 4 etc. See the list of all supported games in the sarien.conf file included in the distribution ZIP file.
Note that they are NOT compatible with the AGDI (Anonymous Game Developers Interactive) remakes (see THIS; right now, KQ1, KQ2 and Quest for Glory II) either! (Incidentally, if you're a fan of free (!) adventure games, make sure you give these games a try.)
Getting and running PocketSarien
Go HERE; it’ll be listed at the bottom. Direct link HERE.
Unzip PocketSarien.exe to anywhere on your Windows Mobile device. As explained in the readme.txt in the same ZIP file, you may also want to create a directory named etc in the root of the built-in storage of your device and copy the file sarien.conf in there.
Now, copy all the files from the original AGI games to anywhere on your Windows Mobile device (make sure you install Mad Programmer’s File Dialog Changer to be able to navigate anywhere on your device. See THIS for more info on this). You can safely leave out *.ovl, *.com, *FONT files and the AGI file to save storage.
Now, just run PocketSarien.exe and select any file from your games, let it be VOL.0, VOL.1 or anything else visible. The game will start.
Getting the original AGI games
Unlike with some Lucasfilm games or all Magnetic Scrolls ones, it’s not possible to acquire all games off the Web because of the copyright issues. However, some of them are still (legally) downloadable; for example, The Black Cauldron (also see THIS) and Donald Duck's Playground on Al Lowe’s personal homepage (Note that the other games don’t seem to be compatible!)
(A personal remark: I really recommend the above-linked Donald Duck's Playground; back in the eighties, my little brother’s favorite game.)
Also, the two compatible fangames, Space Quest 0 – Replicated and Space Quest - The Lost Chapter (also see THIS) are freely available.
Finally, you can also download LSLI and SQI off the Web.
Unfortunately, the well-known abandonware site Underdogs doesn’t list many AGI (and, as far as FreeSCI is concerned, SCI0) titles.
Verdict
I can only recommend Pocket Sarien. It runs just great on all QVGA devices (and also VGA ones if you do have an external / built-in hardware keyboard; unfortunately, it’ll always use Portrait, which isn’t the best with landscape keyboards). Highly recommended!

FreeSCI for PocketPC 0.3.4c
While PocketSarien is an AGI-only interpreter, FreeSCI is an SCI0 (Sierra's Creative Interpreter version 0) one. Please see this Wiki page for more information on what this means and what other SCI versions there are.
The author of the port, PocketInsanity, is the author of some other, free utilities like XRick, OpenJazz, PocketUAE and Wolf3D. They’re all free and should be given a test ride. Yes, free doesn’t necessarily mean bad not only with the PocketInsanity stuff, but also vijay555, FdcSoft / DotFred and n0p.
This WM2003+ (no pre-WM2003 compatibility – it is NOT compatible with PPC2k2 devices either!) emulator is for some of (the ones in the SCI0 and SCI01 section here and also this list) the newer Sierra titles. This means that its compatibility is much narrower than what the official homepage states (also see this thread on this problem). That is, the game is not compatible with the vast majority of the list "Leisure Suit Larry 2-7, Space Quest 3-6, King's Quest 4-6, Quest for Glory 1-4". This is certainly bad news.
Note that the freely available Leisure Suit Larry 2 Point and Click does not use SCI (but AGS) and is, therefore, incompatible with FreeSCI.
Installing and running FreeSCI
Get the file HERE (alternate, direct download HERE).
Unzip freesci.exe anywhere on your Windows Mobile device and read the enclosed README.PocketPC.
Unfortunately, unlike with Sarien, you MUST list the games you have on your system in the main configuration file of FreeSCI. This is problematic because of two issues.
First, the configuration files use the Unix newline convention and they MUST stay in this format. This means you can’t edit the files with Windows’ Notepad (because it doesn’t handle Unix-style newline). You can’t use Windows’ Wordpad either because it’ll save the edited file using the Windows newline convention, which is incompatible with FreeSCI. Therefore, you MUST use for example the easy-to-use, free EOLNconv for converting between the two formats. In my article “Java Midlets on the Pocket PC - the Complete Tutorial”, I’ve also recommended this tool for conversion from the Unix newline format to that of Windows (for exiting) and back.
Second, under newer editions of the Windows Mobile operating systems starting with WM5 (including, of course, WM6), you can’t create a directory starting with a dot. This is unlike older (pre-WM5) operating systems. This bug hasn’t been fixed in the last 1.5 years and no one has been able to find a solution to it (also see THIS, THIS and THIS (note that the there recommended Resco won’t help)) – before me, that is. Yes, I was the first to be able to fix the bug. (The Windows Mobile community can call itself very lucky to have a coder / programmer like me to fix problems like this - and I haven't even mentioned some of the other productivity apps I've contributed to!)
To fix the bug, using a hexa file editor, position to cbe74 and change '2e' to, say, 66 (the hex code for 'f'). If you are afraid using a hex editor, I’ve made the hacked EXE available HERE; it requires the config file to be put in the ffreesci (instead of .freesci) directory in the root.
Finally, note that you must also list the version number of your game in the config file, not only its directory. To find it out, open the main .exe file (it's about 70 kbytes and, with most games, it's called sierra.exe and sciv.exe) with a file viewer (for example, F3 in Total Commander) and look for (Find, F7) the string ".000". When you find it, paste the entire X.000.XXX version number it's located in into the configuration file. (Also see THIS – it’s a worse description though).
Note that it works with external keyboards; then, however, the cursor keys will not be remapped to the landscape mode and will, therefore, work the other way around.
Speed issues
Unfortunately, unlike with Sarien, the FreeSCI is VERY slow (also see for example THIS). It’s like playing these games on an imaginary 1 MHz IBM PC with CGA emulation on a Hercules monitor. Really-really bad, even on a fast Windows Mobile device!
Note that some people recommend (see for example THIS) tweaking the graphics parameters; using the
dirty_strategy = 1
pic0_dither_mode = dither
parameters instead of the default
dirty_strategy = clusters
pic0_dither_mode = flat
In my practice, this didn't help at all.
Note that (I've tested this all!)
turning up the speed to 16 (Speed/Change) won't help at all – on the contrary
adding the pcmout_driver = null option to disable sound won't really help
also note that if you remove midi_device and sound_server, things will get much worse
See THIS for more info on these parameters.
Related info: PG.
Verdict
Unlike with Pocket Sarien, I don’t recommend this interpreter. It’s just TOO slow, even if you try to tweak the parameters. It’s pretty useless to try to play anything in it.

Ever wanted to know how you can use low-res (176*220) titles on your QVGA phone?

If you have a QVGA Smartphone like the HTC Vox / s710, you know well enough that most existing games and other graphics-based Smartphone apps (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) out there only use a postage-stamp sized screen area. An example of this is PDAMill’s Flux Challenge, which, being designed for the traditional low-res (176*220) Smartphone resolution, only uses part of the available QVGA screen estate:
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There were no widely known solutions for the problem. Some developers announced support for QVGA devices (for example, that of Cell Doom – see announcement HERE), but the most (including PDAMill) didn’t.
Fortunately, an excellent White Russian coder has come up with a generic solution, which not only makes it possible to run MANY (but not all!) games at full screen, but, in cases, also lets for using real (!) QVGA resolution with some titles (for example, emulators).
Downloading, installing
Go to this MoDaCo thread and download the ZIP file attached to the first post. You’ll need to register as a forum user if you aren’t able to access it. If you don’t want to bother with it, I’ve also uploaded the file to my database back-end; it’s HERE.
After this, just unZIP it and start GxQvga Patcher.exe. Should you encounter an error message complaining about the lack of the .NET Framework 2, you will need to download it HERE (note that some stated it only requires 1.1. I haven’t checked whether they’re right. The latter is accessible HERE.)
Using
This patcher app runs on the desktop, NOT on the Smartphone. This means you must transfer the main EXE file of the game / emulator / app you’d like to make use of the QVGA screen to your desktop computer first. To do this, use for example Total Commander with the CE file system patch (see THIS for an explanation of installing it) or, if you don’t want to bother, just the “Explore” button of ActiveSync.
Transfer the main EXE files (but nothing else) of the apps / games you’d like to patch to the directory of where the above-mentioned, just decompressed GxQvga Patcher.exe resides.
Now, start GxQvga Patcher.exe. It will present you a dialog:
In there, click “Select exe file to patch...". Now, select the EXE file you’d like to patch:
After letting it go on, you’ll be presented a message telling you the patching was successful:
Now, all you need to do is:
Copy the patched EXE file back to your MS Smartphone, making sure you overwrite the original EXE file
Go to the QVGA subdirectory on your desktop (just under the directory where GxQvga Patcher.exe resides), and copy XG.dll to the same directory on your smartphone
Start the game / app to see whether it worked; answer Yes to the message.
If the game / app still only uses 176*220 (and not the full screen), exit it and go to the SCALE (NOT the previous QVGA!) subdirectory on your desktop, and copy XG.dll to the same directory on your smartphone and copy XG.dll to the smartphone, making sure you overwrite the previously copied QVGA XG.dll. Now, start the game on your Smartphone. Hope it’ll use the full screen. If it still doesn’t do this, then, nothing can help, I’m afraid.
Examples of the before-after cases
PocketHobbitSP2003 (as of the current, Alpha 11 version) doesn’t support QVGA devices. As can be seen in the following screenshot, without patching, it only uses a stamp-size screen area in Portrait mode on QVGA devices:
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062007C64Emus/c64EmuDefaultStamp.bmp.png
After the patch and using the QVGA DLL, it becomes much bigger and, what is even more important, makes use of the full horizontal screen reoslution – that is, 240 pixels, resulting in MUCH more readable text:
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062007C64Emus/PatchedSEQVGAP.bmp.png
Incidentally, with the SCALE DLL, it also fills in the entire screen horizontally, BUT only upscaling the original, 176*132 rendition resulting in a MUCH inferiour real resolution & readability:
http://www.winmobiletech.com/062007C64Emus/PatchedSPVersionScaleDLLQVGAPortrait.bmp.png
This is why I’ve emphasized you MUST give a try to the QVGA DLL first and only give a try to the SCALE one when the former doesn’t deliver any results.
Recommended link
This MoDaCo thread discusses the converter at length. A MUST!

Thanks for this!
I think your contributions should be published in the wiki.
Cheers
JockyW

As you said, it was already posted on MoDaCo ...
But great anyway.

jockyw2001 said:
Thanks for this!
I think your contributions should be published in the wiki.
Cheers
JockyW
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish I had the time to edit the Wiki... the sole reason I don't publish it is that there would be a LOT of manual editing involved as I couldn't create an automated script to convert everything into the local Wiki format (I had special problems with linked images, which just didn't want to work).

Menneisyys said:
I wish I had the time to edit the Wiki... the sole reason I don't publish it is that there would be a LOT of manual editing involved as I couldn't create an automated script to convert everything into the local Wiki format (I had special problems with linked images, which just didn't want to work).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I wanted to add, though this was originaly posted on MoDaCo, I like your thread too for the pictures .
What's the point with the wiki? What's the problem with linked pictures???

KevinSephiroth said:
That's what I wanted to add, though this was originaly posted on MoDaCo, I like your thread too for the pictures .
What's the point with the wiki? What's the problem with linked pictures???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no time to reedit my articles when crossposting - I do everything with automated scripts. Unfortunately, so far, I haven't been able to come up with a script that would convert my articles 100% to the XDA-Dev Wiki - I had problems with the image conversions. Asmy articles are FULL of images, both linked and inline, it'd require a LOT of work to edit them all before submitting. I wish I had the time for that...

REVIEW: mDesktop, a brand new phone controller app; comparison to Jeyo 2.1

Motionapps’ mDesktop (homepage HERE) has got pretty much press coverage in the last weeks; it’s been frontpaged at PPCT / SPT (link), Dial.ca (link), PalmAddicts (link) etc. As it was me who has published the most thorough comparative(!) reviews of all the comparable solutions (see the last one HERE, making sure you follow the links to the earlier ones), I’ve given the new title a very thorough try so that I can find out whether it’s worth checking out – that is, the question no one has answered so far. Also, I’ve thoroughly tested the new features of the recently-released, 2.1 version of Jeyo Mobile Companion, the most important, directly comparable application and compared it to mDesktop.
In a nutshell, mDesktop has the following features:
Control your smartphone from your desktop computer or laptop with mouse (on PPC devices), scroller and/or keyboard
General info on you device displayed on the screen of your desktop computer or laptop (info on network provider, battery state, received SMS or e-mails etc.)
Do all of this by using your desktop computer or laptop screen and keyboard:
Simple file management - view images and files on your device or transfer some from your desktop computer or laptop to it (or vice versa)
Tasks and appointment management (view and change existing ones or add new ones)
Search contacts, send SMS or e-mail
Call someone or respond to a call, click to put a call on hold or speakerphone, ignore call
Chat - no more browsing received SMS or typing in replies on your smartphone. mDesktop also saves all the words you wrote or received from someone.
Install applications by drag and drop - no more endless typing, tapping and clicking on your smartphone
Get all the system info on your smartphone displayed in one convenient place
OK, let’s see how it fares in practice and how it compares to the alternates. (Please DO read the above-linked articles; here, I will NOT present you an explanation of every single issue I list.)
First, some demo shots of the capabilities of the app:
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Threaded(!) SMS list (I’ve reduced the vertical size to hide personal phone numbers and such). Another example:
As can clearly be seen, the same list contains all the incoming messages – and the outgoing ones too for a quick and easy view of what has taken place.
Listing the contacts. Unfortunately, unlike with adding new appointments, writing SMS’es, e-mails, calling a number etc., it’s not possible to add new contacts.
Desktop control
Compared to other controller tools without(!) explicit phone application / PIM support (VirtualCE 4; Pocket Controller and My Mobiler being currently the three best):
Cons
Very high (at least three times compared to other solutions) CPU usage all the time (NOT ONLY in desktop controller mode!!); THIS screenshot shows about 80% on the QVGA 195 MHz TI OMAP-based HTC Wizard (about 70% on the 176*220 HTC Oxygen, also based on the 195 MHz TI OMAP). This is VERY bad and should be addressed at once. Why heating up the CPU when the user doesn’t even need the most CPU-intensive desktop controller mode?
Can’t run on non-phone devices
No text copy/paste between the desktop and the mobile
The remote controller keeps crashing on the high-res VGA WM6.1 HTC Universal (running Ranju’s v7.6), unlike on the non-high-res the s310, s710 (both with factory ROM’s) and HTC Wizard (with the AMP WM6.1 ROM))
Minor problems:
No JPEG quality setting when exporting screenshots (not that big a problem – you can decrease the quality afterwards)
Impossible to rotate the image of the screen (would be very handy at, say, looking at landscape GAPI games, the Thunderhawk browser etc.)
No video recording (unlike with, say, SOTI’s Pocket Controller)
No TCP/IP-based remote access / control (unlike with many of the alternatives)
With MS Smartphones, not any kind of (virtual) stylus emulation, not even the hotkeys (which are all supported by other device controllers)
Pros
Direct desktop-side GUI for writing SMS and e-mail messages, making appointments etc – much faster than doing the same through the controller (like with the other tools).
Access to everything (file system, system state, e-mails, SMS, contacts, calendar, tasks etc – traditional remote controllers only offer access to the first two)
Screenshot can export in all the four most common format (albeit without JPEG quality setting)
The HTC S710 keyboard works; so does the s310 dialpad
Phone-specific features:
Compared to Jeyo Mobile Companion 2.1 (which has lately received really nice phone-specific functionalities)
Pros
Full desktop control, as opposed to “just” taking screenshots (Jeyo screenshot of the latter)
System info is a bit more advanced than that of Jeyo
You can add tasks and appointments; in Jeyo, “only” contacts.
Jeyo doesn’t have a dial interface with buttons (not that entering the number directly into the dialog box would be THAT big a problem); mDesktop does.
Has direct access to the pictures on the PDA – and the files too (not that this would be THAT important)
Cons
Jeyo’s SMS writing interface is much better (see THIS)
In Jeyo, you can add new contacts (screenshot) – in mDesktop, you can’t
In Jeyo, you can set the home (Today) screen and the sounds
Jeyo also has a process list dialog
Jeyo allows for (even mass) copying between phone and SIM memory
Jeyo allows for clipboard synchronization
Jeyo has no measurable CPU usage
Jeyo has access to the full call list; no such feature in mDesktop
Jeyo has more sophisticated CAB installation: as can be seen, it even allows for installing CAB’s directly in ZIP files. mDesktop’s interface is much simpler: all it allows for is dragging a CAB file on it; then, it’ll automatically start ActiveSync to start installation
Both mDesktop and Jeyo support threaded SMS view (see THIS) and are very similarly priced ($19.99 / $19.95)
Verdict
mDesktop is pretty promising and is better than standard remote controllers like that of SOTI if you plan to add appointments, write SMS messages etc. very often, without using for example Outlook on the desktop (and relying on ActiveSync to synch the new records to your handset). However, being version 1.0 only, it surely has some major lacking functionality otherwise present in Jeyo (and the other way around). Currently, on the whole, I’ve found Jeyo 2.1 better – as long as you don’t need to mass-enter new tasks and appointments or don’t need the remote control capabilities. If you do, you’ll want to give a try to mDesktop; otherwise, stick with Jeyo (or, if you don’t need the phone-specific desktop functionality, “only” remote controlling, one of the three most recommended remote controllers). I really hope mDesktop will be improved in the (near) future and the most annoying bugs (most importantly, the HUGE CPU usage resulting in massive overheating and slowdowns) fixed. Fort the time being, I’m a bit hesitant to nominate it for this year’s Best [Windows Mobile] Software Awards, of which I'm the Nominations Manager (also this year).

Version v1.0.1 has just been released, fixing many of the issues I've pointed out, particularly the CPU usage bug.