There are several sound recorder applications for the Pocket PC (please see the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible for more info.) Now, the previously Palm OS-only Audacity Personal DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) has also been ported to the Pocket PC.
The title is available for all WM2003+ operating systems and is accessible here.
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In this review, I “only” provide a list of pros and cons and compare the title to other PPC sound recorders.
Pros
Filename may contain full date / time (screenshot 1 2 3. Very few other PPC recorders are capable of the same (see the “Additional recording features: Auto recording numbering?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible and my Audio Memory System by Personal Memory Systems review). Currently, as far as non-MP3-recording (but either Speex or Ogg) is concerned, the best Resco is able to include both the date and time in filenames but it’s not so configurable as Audacity Personal DVR.
It can pause/resume (not possible with all recorders; see the “Recording pause/resume?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible) and even append to recordings (even rarer; see the “Append new recording to file?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible)
Alarms can be defined and added with your own recordings (as opposed to the built-in notification / alarm mechanism in Windows Mobile)
Buttons are freely redefinable for all the four types of dialogs / recording states. See here and here (button shortcuts on the Home dialog), here (Idle state), here (Record state) and here (Playback state). Note, however, that the hardware button support is certainly lacking; also see the Cons section on this.
You can start recording with a looooong-press of any (and the same) hardware button (after assigning Audacity to a button first in Settings / Buttons and assigning the same button to the Record functionality in the Home and the Idle dialogs / states and to either Stop or Pause/Resume for the Record and Playback states. (Remember, however, to disable the tutorial at startup by checking in the related checkbox!) Most alternative Pocket PC sound recorders require, in general, TWO button presses to achieve the same (see the “Buttons: One-button recording? Does it need to show the app window?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible.
Free (currently)
Desktop-side file synchronization support
Cons
Exceptionally high CPU usage – much higher than with Notes or anything else only using built-in OS-level codecs (check out the related remarks in the Audio Recording Bible – you WILL see other apps, which are only based on the built-in codecs, consume far less power)! (Some figures: Dell Axim x51v: 25% at 624 MHz; Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720: 60% at 416 MHz.). This, unfortunately, not only means vastly reduced battery life when you make a lot of recording (and even playback! – unfortunately, the CPU usage is very high even when you play back stuff), but also skips in the recording on some devices as is the case for example on the HTC Wizard, even when overclocked to 240 MHz. These problems render the application useless on some models.
Only built-in codecs may be used, unlike with the Palm version (see the codec chart at the bottom of the page). A decent sound reorder should support something better than PCM WAV / GSM; for example, MP3 or Speex.
Doesn’t see CF cards in devices sporting them – an example x51v screenshot is here (the situation is exactly the same on all other devices with a CF slot; for example, the PL720). This also means it won’t be able to make recordings into file stores on pre-WM5 devices (and unlocked Extended ROM’s on PPC PE devices) either – only (mini / micro) SD cards.
It doesn’t handle the two side buttons on the Dell Axim x51v and Pocket Loox 720; there is no support for the HP iPAQ hx4700 side button either (tested on a WM5-upgraded device). On the HTC Wizard, it only handles the Camera, Mail, Wireless and Notes buttons (that is, there is no support for the Explorer button and the two WM5 softbuttons); this means at least you’ll be able to use it in the one-keypress mode if you redefine any of the supported (preferably side) buttons. The button referred to as the “Side button” (the only one to have a record functionality assigned to by default) is not supported on any of these devices; this means you MUST redefine one of the accessible buttons (which will be one of the front buttons on non-PPC PE models and can also be the side buttons on PPC PE models) in order to be able to use it to start / stop recording. The developers, as with many others not having read it, should read on my past tutorials / articles on enumerating the available buttons on a given Pocket PC ( Where does the PPC Registry store button mapping info - a tutorial (alternatives: PPC Magazine, BrightHand; make sure you also follow the link to More Programmers'/Hackers' Stuff, along with some cool Pocket Loox 7xx Hold Button Tips: More on Pocket PC Hardware Buttons for more info.). I’ve discussed this problem with the developers; they have assured me support for all accessible buttons will be implemented really soon.
No built-in screenoff support; all the utility offers is backlight dimming (but NOT locking – now, compare this to how Resco allows for full even button protection!) the screen after 30 seconds (independent of the system setting; that is, you don’t even need to enable screen dimming on the system level at all); see for example the button reassignment list above. Of course, you can still use independent screenoff utilities even assigned to hardware buttons, as long as you don’t re-map these buttons inside Personal DVR to inner functions. The fact that only screen dimming takes place also means the graphics-related excess CPU usage will always be a problem.
On the 624 MHz x51v, it takes seven seconds for the application to start recording when started anew – in no way so fast as Notes (not to talk about its CPU usage) or even most other alternative recorders. In this respect, preferring a two-buttonpress-required, but much faster-to-be-invoked recorder may pay out.
Verdict
As with many other direct Palm (and Symbian – see for example Lonely Cat Games’ products like ProfiMail and LGC Jukebox) ports (see for example my review of mVoice 5 by MotionApps, which suffers from exactly the same problem – that is, a title that has been one of the best on the Palm can’t really be compared to the commercial alternatives on the Pocket PC), this application isn’t really a match for current top-of-the-line, commercial (!) Pocket PC sound recorders like Resco – the Pocket PC platform is just far stronger, software-wise, than Palm.
However, given that it’s free (and I’m comparing it to commercial titles like Resco Audio Recorder), I still recommend it, particularly if you’re looking for a one (as opposed to most alternative Pocket PC recorders which almost all require two (consequent) presses) button-press application if you can live with the (current) limitations and problems (no CF, no support for side buttons of non-Phone devices, very high CPU usage, lack of screenoff, long activation time when it needs to be loaded etc.). Hope the problems will soon be ironed out in subsequent versions.
UPDATE (02/03/2007): PPCT frontpage
Updated review posted.
Related
REVIEW: a brand new phone / meeting call recorder with great, unique rolling recording capabilities: LivePVR by Softtrends LLC
This sound / voice recorder application is both a phone call autorecorder and a meeting recorder with a, on the Pocket PC, really unique (yes, I know what I’m speaking about – I’ve thoroughly tested all the alternate voice/sound recorder applications – please see the “Recommended links” section for links) feature: “rolling recording”.
In this article, I thoroughly compare the just-released, latest (2.4) version to the already existing alternates, particularly PMRecorder (please read the review of the latter here – I will NOT explain why you can’t record the other party on most Pocket PC Phone Edition in this article!)
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Compatibility, availability
It’s available here and costs $9.95. The trial version is pretty usable and only time (30 days) constrained if you want to take it for a test ride.
It’s only compatible with WM5. I’ve tested it on two WM5 PPC Phone Edition devices (HTC Universal and HTC Wizard) – both worked OK (except for the VGA incompatibility problems on the former).
The unique feature: “rolling recording”
It may happen to you many times that you would like to record things that have just been said. In these cases, “rolling recording” can be of help. It makes it possible to record things that have already been said – before you pressed the “Record” button.
Please note that you will need to read the online documentation on the “rolling recording” in order to be able to properly utilize the unique rolling recording facility of the app. (Note that the homepage has a dead link to the Virtual Demo). In my extensive tests, rolling recording worked flawlessly and really delivered what it's supposed to.
Compared to...
Yes, as applications (fortunately) don't exist in isolation, it's the best to compare this app to the numerous alternates to get a clerar picture whether it's worth getting (or even trying).
As opposed to other “standard” voice recorders...
Pros
Buffering functionality – no other voice recorder is capable of the same. Note that the “Rewind Length” slider in Vianix Pocket Talk Enterprise Pro only sets the amount of seconds the Rewind icon steps back on each press (the same stands for forwarding).
It puts the entire date/time (incl. seconds) in the filename. Except for iPlay (which puts hours and minutes in the filenames – not the seconds) and Personal Memory Systems’ Audio Memory System (which is quite revolutionary in that it puts both the date, the time (incl. seconds) and a user-supplied remark in the filename), no other recorder does the same: they “only” autonumber the files. This approach can be easier for many people, particularly if you see the filelist from an application (for example, the FileList control itself in Windows Mobile itself when listing files created more than a day ago) without timestamps or, when the timestamps are lost (because, for example, you FTP the files or ActiveSync synchronizes them to the desktop).
Isn’t overpriced, unlike many of the alternates
No excess CPU usage: in both “conference” mode and while actively recording, around 1% only (measured on the HTC Wizard, recording to a storage card), which certainly shows it’s well-written and bugfree (in this respect)
Can record as a background task (unlike Notes)
Moderate memory usage: with 45 sec pre/postbuffers (as can also be seen in this Settings screenshot), it’s 2 Mbytes only
Cons
On the Pocket PC, no touchscreen support: must be operated by the D-pad + Action button + WM5 softkeys or the built-in keyboard (if present)
Sometimes, on the HTC Wizard, D-Pad only started to work after a forced screen orientation change while the app is active (this isn’t a problem on the HTC Universal though). This was also the case when traversing the focus to another application and then, switching back to LivePVR: you must change the screen orientation in order to be regain control on the GUI. After resetting the Pocket PC, these problems generally went away. It’s still be good to be aware of the solution if you want to avoid resetting your PPC.
Recording quality can in no way be set - everything is recorded as lengthy (about one Megabyte for every 45 seconds) PCM files, no matter what the system-level quality setting is. (Needless to say, it sports no codecs either, unlike many of the alternates.)
There are no niceties like Voice Activation System (VAS)
No VGA support – it only occupies the upper left quarter of the screen on VGA devices like the HTC Universal even in standard (SE) VGA mode
WM5 only (tested on other, previous platforms – a no-go)
As far as phone recording is concerned, as opposed to PMRecorder:
Pros
Resulting file doesn’t have an additional header and, therefore, need to be converted in order to be played in any media players. (Note that PMRecorder, thanks to my documenting the header and a Russian coder coding the converter, already has a third-party decoder.)
Cons
Doesn’t store the number of the caller/called
Auto-phonecall-recording must be reactivated by hand after every single reboot
PMRecorder has two recording quality settings (one of them using the space-saving GSM vocoder); this only one
Costs $10 (as opposed to the free PMRecorder)
Verdict
For a phone call recorder, stick with PMRecorder. The latter is definitely better in every respect. The same stands for recording individual voice notes where rollbacking isn’t needed (because you know beforehand what you want to record and what not).
However, as far as conference/meeting recording is concerned where rollback capabilities are a must, you won’t find anything better for the Pocket PC. It’s only in this case that I heartily recommend this application.
A TIP: how can you make it record all your phone calls without explicitly starting LivePVR?
It must be done exactly the same way as with PMRecorder: you just put a link to the executable of the program, \Program Files\LivePVR\sftLivePVR.exe, into \Windows\StartUp (with PMRecorder, the executable can be found by default at \Program Files\PMRecorder\PMRecorder.exe).
Unfortunately, while with PMRecorder it’s sufficient to just minimize the task when it’s (auto)started (and it will record everything), with LivePVR, you MUST explicitly go to the Phone Call PVR menu (one Action button press) and explicitly reactivate phone recording (two Action button presses). After this, you can safely minimize it, just as with PMRecorder, and it will record all your calls.
Note that while, seemingly, auto recording is activated upon reboot, in practice, it doesn’t work. This is why you will need to reactivate it after every reboot. In this respect, PMRecorder is certainly easier to operate, particularly if you often reboot your device.
Recommended links
In addition to the most important PMRecorder article, I also recommend the following articles:
Everything you may need to know about sound recording on the Pocket PC
and, to a lesser degree, my following reviews:
Personal Memory Systems’ Audio Memory System
MotionApps’ mVoice 5
does LivePVR record phone call with ear and without loudspeaker ?
Does LivePVR record phone conversation with in-ear and without loudspeaker ?
is there another software that does this?
I know the law!!
thank
goodmanbrt said:
Does LivePVR record phone conversation with in-ear and without loudspeaker ?
is there another software that does this?
I know the law!!
thank
Click to expand...
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Welcome to XDA-Dev
Nope - it's suffering from the same, hardware-based problem as all other call recording apps, as has also been pointed out in the article.
New (final) beta of Resco Audio Recorder out with BRAND NEW,high q. MP3 & AAC support
Anyone into serious (!) audio and/or automatic phone call recording on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC only – Smartphones are NOT supported, unfortunately) knows Resco Audio Recorder, probably the best recorder application, only - in MP3 recording - matched by VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE).
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The developer of this excellent application has been continuously releasing beta versions of his forthcoming version 4. I’ve published several articles on these versions; the last is HERE. The reader is strongly asked to check out these reviews to see how for example the brand new call recording functionality works. In the current review, I only elaborate the changes.
The official “what’s new” is as follows:
New codec pack with high quality MP3 and AAC recording for higher ARM processors
Optimized version for Intel XScale devices
Automatic display off
Bookmarks visible on track bar
Bookmarks with optional text note
Automatic phone call recording works after soft reset
Gain control fixed
Bugs fixed
Yes, as can be seen, the MP3 encoder quality (which has always been the most problematic aspect of Resco Audio Recorder) has been dramatically enhanced and a brand new AAC encoder plug-in has been added, allowing for using even lower encoding bit speeds with approximately the same quality (and, for that matter, somewhat lower CPU usage, meaning better battery life).
This means using this recorder is, from now on, recommended when you want to record into MP3 - unlike with previous versions.
Installing, configuring
As opposed to the previous betas (and, of course, the old, 3.x series), you will need to download and install two files: Audio Recorder itself, and an additional codec pack. It’s the latter that has the two brand new, high-quality codecs. Both are availbale on the beta page of the 4.x series.
Note that you should ONLY install the new codec pack on XScale or TI OMAP CPU’s. It CANNOT be installed on (old; in general, pre-2003) StrongARM devices. Furthermore, it’s fully incompatible with the Samsung CPU. This means Samsung-based Pocket PC’s (for example, the HTC Trinity / P3600, the HTC TyTN / Hermes etc) won’t work at all and it’s absolutely useless to try to install the codec pack on them. They CAN be installed: the installer only stops the install process when it notices the current Pocket PC only having a StrongARM CPU. However, there are no install-time (or, for that matter, runtime) warnings upon trying to install codecpack on Samsung CPU’s. You will only see something has gone absolutely wrong when you try to switch to using the two new codecs (the old ones work without problems): then, the application will quit at once. This also means you won’t be able to restart it at all. You will need to completely uninstall the entire suite (not just the codec pack: uninstalling it will also result in the other codecs becoming totally inaccessible).
Note that you can install the two files in any order.
After the installation, select either the new AACv4I or MP3v4I encoders in the encoder drop-down list:
Note that, as far as MP3’s are concerned, it’s MP3v4I that is the new; “MP3” is still the old (and in no way recommended – not even on incompatible – StrongARM / Samsung-based – models) encoder.
Problems
Upon AAC playback, depending on the CPU speed, it starts to stutter after a while (almost instantaneously on 195 MHz TI OMAP's, in about 1.5 minutes on 520 MHz XScale and after about 4.5 minutes on 624 MHz XScale devices). This needs to be fixed as the CPU usage is linearly increasing during this time - must be a simple program bug. The developer has promised to look into the problem.
Recording stops after five minutes, unlike with previous beta versions, which allowed for unlimited recordings (and, it seems, don’t have timebombs either).
Benchmarks
As usual, I’ve made SEVERAL benchmarks and tests to see the CPU usage with the two new codecs to see their battery friendlyness, incompatibilities, usability on non-overclocked TI OMAP Pocket PC’s etc.
As can be seen, the new MP3 encoder is only a tad – about 4% - more CPU intensive than the old one. In addition, the AAC encoder takes about 14% less CPU time than the MP3 encoder and is, therefore, probably the best choice for long-time, quality recording where battery life is of extreme importance.
All in all, excellent results - kudos to Resco!
The future – Smartphone
The developer also promises an MS Smartphone version. Until then, your best choice is VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE) for quality MP3 / call recording.
Verdict
The most problematic part of Resco Audio Recorder is now fixed, making the application THE most recommended generic recorder application for the Pocket PC (unless you need the special call recording features – for example, the auto speakerphone mode – of VITO AudioNotes). Kudos to Resco!
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.
REVIEW & COMPARISON:great, free(!) PDA controller software EveryWAN Remote Support PE
Sparus Software is going to release a free(!), slightly (but not that much) dumbed-down version of their pretty useful EveryWAN Mobility Manager software currently offered for enterprise customers.
The new EveryWAN Remote Support, Personal Edition will be completely free. The biggest difference between it and the already-existing enterprise version is that EveryWAN only supports connections via ActiveSync. This means no (remote) TCP/IP connections are allowed.
Note that this isn’t a full review of the app as most of the functionalities the new application offers are already known from other remote controller applications; for example, VirtualCE, SOTI Pocket Controller or My Mobiler (see THIS for more info on these) or mDesktop, of which the new, 1.0.1 version has just been released, fixing many of the problems / issues I’ve pointed out in my review of the initial, 1.0.0 version. This means you’ll want to read my just-linked reviews and comparisons of what a decent phone controller app should be able to.
Now, let’s take a look at how EveryWAN compares to the above-reviewed & compared apps.
In a nutshell, in my very thorough tests it proved to be VERY good. It has really decent CPU usage, is compatible with both Pocket PC’s and Smartphones, has excellent goodies like a built-in task manager, registry editor etc.
Unique features: direct drawing on client screen, VoIP
Drawing on the client’s screen is really unique (but is, of course, somewhat limited usability in traditional, local USB environments):
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VoIP (Voice over IP) works just great (tested with several setups), with very moderate CPU usage:
Of course, the lack of real IP connections (and, therefore, remote assistance / connections) make this feature pretty redundant. As with drawing on the phone / PDA screen, it’s over the classic "let’s access an employee’s handset from the enterprise via, say, a mobile phone connection" that this feature can really be used for.
CPU usage
It’s VERY low – much lower than that of ANY other controller application. Excellent! Some example screenshots showing this:
(VGA(!) iPAQ 214 – around 3%; the same on the 520 MHz VGA HTC Universal running WM6.1)
(s710 QVGA Smartphone – around 2%)
(WM2003 iPAQ 2210)
That is, it’s really low even on VGA devices – where alternative solutions consume at least an order of magnitude more CPU time.
Built-in registry editor
(Remote) registry editors built into remote tools are very useful – I very frequently use the one built into SOTI’s Pocket Controller. Unfortunately, the other, highly recommended controllers (VirtualCE and My Mobiler) don’t have a built-in registry editor; hence, I was relaly delighted to see EveryWAN does.
Following is a quick elaboration on the registry editor’s capabilities (see the Registry Editor Bible http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/menneisyys/UltimateRoundupOfRegistryEditors.asp for more info)
It’s capable of all the numeric systems with DWORDs:
There’s a dedicated editor for REG_BINARY values:
and for multi-line strings:
It’s also capable of advanced searches:
However, it’s incapable of exporting / importing; in this respect, it’s definitely inferior to SOTI Pocket Controller’s registry editor – or, advanced Registry editors like Resco running on the handset.
File Transfer
EveryWAN also supports built-in file transfer:
(Note that this isn’t essential – both ActiveSync and the Total Commander WinCE FS plug-in support it –, still, it’s nice to have it built-in.)
System info; task manager
The system info dialog is pretty detailed too:
The task manager dialog is also pretty cool:
Note that, as expected, the CPU % usage meter doesn’t work – you’ll need to run acbTaskMan to get a detailed info on CPU usage.
Skin manager
It also has a very nice skin editor:
MS Smartphone (touchscreen-less devices) support
The keyboard doesn’t work with MS Smartphones with slide-out keyboard when the keyboard is closed (it does when opened).
The on-screen softbuttons can’t be clicked (not that big a problem though), unlike with the other apps.
Note that, by default, it couldn’t install its client to my WM5 HTC s310 (Oxygen). The CAB file, EWRemoteSupportPESetup.ARM.CAB, the installer transferred to the root of the phone, turned out not to be compatible with Smartphones at all. However, manually transferring \Program Files\Sparus Software\EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition\EWRemoteSupportPE.ARM.CAB to the phone and executing it there worked:
(Note that the Wm6 QVGA HTC s710 / Vox didn’t have this problem.)
All in all,
Pros
FREE!!!!
Very low CPU usage – while still delivers pretty quick results even on VGA devices
VoIP – working just great!
Registry editor (albeit without export / import)
Lets for emulating button presses (four application keys; two softkeys; the Home (SP) / Start Menu (PPC) button; the Back button on SP’s)
Cons
Save screen only in BMP; no video recording
While clipboard copying does work in both directions, it must be manually initiated every time – via a menu or an icon on the icon bar (no keyboard shortcut is available). SOTI’s approach is MUCH better in this regard, which even allows for very quick Ctrl-C / V / X shortcuts and, of course, clipboard auto-synchronization.
No manual screen rotation for, for example, GAPI games
Verdict
This app is really a gift if you don’t need remote (TCP/IP) connections. Highly recommended!
Note that, in addition to the Sparus Software folks, the XDA-Developers people should be also thanked for this excellent app. The Sparus folks have decided to release this application for free because they wanted to give back something to the XDA-Devs community, which has been very helpful as an information source while the Sparus folks were developing their product.
(Note that the app is still not available. It’s promised to be released in some days. When it’s released, I post an article update so you will surely get noticed of it.)
It is possible to define softbuttons using the skin editor
In fact, the on-screen softbuttons can be clicked if they have been defined using the skin editor
Hello,
I'm one of the devs at Sparus Software, and I'd like to comment on your great review :
* the CPU % usage meters actually works, but its precision is 1%. As a result, any measure below 1% is shown as zero ! Your device probably wasn't really doing anything significant at the moment you measured. But I'll quickly increase the precision to 0.1%, to track those little CPU eaters.
* I'm really puzzled about the installation issue you encountered on your SmartPhone. It seems the file transfer failed, ending with a corrupted file. I'll add an automatic retry in such a case.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback !
EveryWAN Remote Support free download available
You can get it here: EveryWAN Remote Support Free Download
hmm. still cant get it clearly.. anyway.. push on this thread..
UPDATE (08/26/2008): it has been released and is available HERE
EveryWAN Remote Support direct download link (no form)
For those of us who don't like filling forms ...
Direct Download Without Filling a Form:
EveryWAN Remote Support Direct Download
Just a quick precision: it is free even for commercial use (but reselling it is prohibited )
You can put it on BitTorrent and Emule.
There's a check in the setup for current version, so if we release a new version it will detect it automatically...
PS: I work for Sparus Software
EveryWAN Remote Support Entreprise Edition ?
hasta_la_vista said:
For those of us who don't like filling forms ...
Just a quick precision: it is free even for commercial use (but reselling it is prohibited )
You can put it on BitTorrent and Emule.
There's a check in the setup for current version, so if we release a new version it will detect it automatically...
PS: I work for Sparus Software
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, hasta_la_vista !
I know this is an old thread, but what happened to your infamous (and totally impossible to find) solution "EveryWAN Remoet Support Entreprise Edition" ? It seems to be able to do what i'm looking for: remote controlling my WM6.5 phone from PC over 3G... Mind you i'm within 2 private networks so it'd need to have the option to connect from phone or PC and i should be able to choose which port to communicate over, depnding on which ports are open on both sides...
I'm of course not asking for any crack, i'm just looking for that software. Ready to register, pay , or anything that comes with it, as long as it does what i want. There are a number of softs available, none are capable of doing this....
It was two and a half years ago that I’ve reviewed the initial version of LivePVR.
With the recent upgrade to version 3.0, a great deal of new functionality has been added to the newly-announced “Pro” and “Enterprise” versions, adding for example online backup (which is pretty much comparable to PMRecorder’s online backup support) and voicemail / answering machine capabilities. (The latter is pretty useful and has always been supported by other apps on the Symbian S60 operating system; and, lately, on Windows Mobile too – see iSecretary; also see THIS for more info.)
In this article, I only discuss call recording capabilities, stability and reliability, which is a central issue under Symbian S60 (and, to a lesser degree, Windows Mobile, where there already are three excellent apps to record calls: Resco Audio Recorder, VITO AudioNotes and the free (!) PMRecorder, making the demand for a call recorder smaller). Also note that, on Windows Mobile, call recording has lately been enabled; see my article Windows Mobile Revolution: call recording supported on almost ALL handsets! for more info. Finally, please check out THIS for the additional capabilities of the Pro / Enterprise versions. As I’m not really interested in them (as opposed to call recording, which is very important to me), I didn’t waste time on thoroughly testing these features (testing call recording on S60 and the two Windows Mobile platforms, using three versions, took me a lot ot time).
First and foremost, you need to remember that there are two sources of different LivePVR versions. Softtrends’ own homepage only has the old 2.08 (Symbian) / 2.90 (WM) versions, while the new livepvrplus.com page has the new one. Nevertheless, if you’re a WM user and want to give the trial version a try, you’ll want to prefer the former (old) version – the new (3.0) one has messed up recording. (Once auto-started upon a call, it won’t stop by itself. You’ll need to manually stop recording and, then, exit and restart the program entirely so that it becomes able to record new calls and play back old recordings.) Note that this doesn’t apply to Symbian S60, where the new version works flawlessly.
Purchasing, price
If you only need call recording (again, you will only want to purchase the current version if you’re on Symbian S60 – the Windows Mobile port of the new, 3.0 version is, currently, buggy, making call recording almost useless), I recommend the Standard version, which only costs $9.99. You can pay by PayPal and immediately receive a non-IMEI-dependent registration number.
As a rule of thumb, if you’re on Windows Mobile:
If you are looking for an app that you’d use its automatic call recording capabilities, do NOT install the current (3.00) version. Use the alternative call recorders instead; most importantly, Resco Audio Recorder, VITO AudioNotes or PMRecorder.
If you’re on Symbian S60:
Heavily recommended over the alternative titles (VITO AudioNotes, ALON MP3 Dictaphone), as long as the beeping isn’t an issue:
- Compared to ALON MP3 Dictaphone 2.87 (see review HERE),
a. it doesn’t crash when recording to a memory card (ALON crashes about once every five calls when using AMR);
b. while the ALON app can also record into MP3’s (when used as a standalone voice recorder, NOT recommended for phone call recording, where the native AMR is the best format to record into on S60), it continuously crashes even when recording to the internal memory. That is, its MP3 capabilities are pretty useless in practice; this means the lacking MP3 recording capabilities of LivePVR aren’t that big an issue. (And, if you do need them, get VITO AudioNotes for standalone (!) MP3 recording.)
c. Also, LivePVR auto-starts itself (if you do enable this under Options / Prefereces / Autostart On Device Boot) upon bootup, unlike the ALON app. (Still speaking of the menu settings, also make sure you go to Options / Settings / Recording Settings under the call recording icon (that is, NOT the main screen with the 3+ main icons!) and switch “PhoneCall features” to “Enabled” to enable automatic recordings. It’s also here that you can switch between the two (WAV and AMR) formats for recording; I recommend the latter.)
d. The definite problem: the ALON app surpresses the beep at the third/ fourth second. Not so with LivePVR – at least not on the v30 Nokia N95.
- Compared to VITO AudioNotes, it doesn’t have problems with cutting at the end – just remember to press the red button on the recording handheld about 1 second later that you stop speaking. It also supports boot-time loading and doesn’t seem to get killed upon “out of memory” situations, unlike AudioNotes (and like the ALON app). I’ve tested the latter quite a lot and (so far) couldn’t make the system (Nokia N95 running the v30 firmware) terminate LivePVR, which is definitely a good thing.
A chart of the OS compatibility of the currently available, tested versions (as you can see, I didn’t bother with the Pro 3.0 version; I assumed it has exactly the same call recording module as the Standard / Enterprise version and, therefore, doesn’t run on Windows Mobile:
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Why I Secretary can’t mute the microphone of my xperia x1 and why the caller can’t hear my answer message
How can I fix this using registry or any tweak tool for windows mobile 6.1
thanks