Need more buttons on your Pocket PC?
One thing I loved about my HTC Harrier (and the same applies to the PDA2K/HTC Blue Angel) was the number of buttons it had. It had nine (count em - nine) hardware buttons including useful things like start and OK. In addition to that it had the keyboard, so if you wanted to, you could do almost everything without pulling out the stylus.
The Jam is different. It only has four buttons. So last night I got a little frustrated with this limitation and decided I had to something about it.
Before I started at Microsoft I reviewed some software called ButtonMapper from Vito Technologies. When you've got nine buttons to choose however, you fail to really make the most of the software, and now that I have the Jam, I really appreciate the additional functionality it gives!
So if you want more buttons - the answer to your problems is Vito ButtonMapper. Why? well here's the two main reasons why:
- Map buttons using either click or click and hold. Sure you can start calendar by clicking the calendar button - but you could also start Pocket Word by clicking and holding the calendar button. So immediately this means you double the number of buttons which is really handy on the Jam.
- Map buttons based on the application you are in. Yes - thats right - you can have the calendar button start the calendar on the today screen, but when you are in calendar, you can have it start calculator instead, and click and hold it to start Pocket Word. So double the number of buttons then multiply by the number of applications you have and thats roughly the number of button mapping options you have available.
The last thing worthy of mentioning is the price - this thing is only US$9.95! Cool. You can purchase it from handango.