WHAT’S HOT

    MemMaid really is a
great multi-functional memory tool. With six separate main areas, and
lots of options between, MemMaid has a lot to offer.

PROGRAM FEATURES

    First, let’s review MemMaid’s features (copied
verbatim from Handango):

    At the
top of every screen you will find a set of buttons and depending on the
view, a drop-down option. The buttons (from left to right) Refresh, Settings,
and Help. Not all the buttons are available at all times, these too are
dependent on the view.

   
For a
more advanced configuration (even with the Quick Cleaner), you launch
MemMaid. As you can see from the screenshots above, MemMaid not
only covers the basics, but also covers the more exotic such as
dead registry and shortcut files. I was surprised to find as many
files as I did on my newly acquired X50v. Strangely, the Advanced
view doesn’t show a "Total Found" as found in the Quick
view.

The settings for the
Cleaner allows you to configure two User Folders, and even do Secure
File deletes.

Once the cleaning progress is completed, you are
informed how many total bytes were removed.

   
The Notification
Queue view is really important for 2002/2003 based devices (the
iPaq 2200 series was notorious for this issue). When you would perform
a soft reset, sometimes those notification items would duplicate
and cause problems. So this view is first designed to find and remove
those duplicates. As many times as I would reset the X50v, I could
never get a duplicate entry.

And
while you can add notifications to the queue, I couldn’t figure
out any good reason to do so (but the option is there).

 The
Startups view is split into three separate categories, and from
each you can change the order, delete, and add individual items.
These categories are:

Start Up Programs

Start
Up Services

And Today Plug-ins.

The next tab view
is Tweaks, containing the DLL Optimizer and Memory Tweaks subcategories.

    Here
is yet another very useful feature of MemMaid. Using the Memory
Tweaks, you can relocate your IE and AvantGo Cache folders to other
locations. In my case, I’ve chosen to move those folders to the
Built-in Storage on my X50v. I don’t recommend pointing this to
removeable locations unless you _always_ leave those cards in place.
This isn’t an issue with MemMaid, but with the OS itself. If you
do remove the card and then put another card in its place, you may
find additional folders on the second card, or a third…trust me,
I’ve seen it first hand. One can adjust the Font Cache Size from
this view, but it does require more memory (and the gain is a possibly
faster display).

You can also use the
slider to adjust memory usage, but this is really no different than
the OS allocation found in the Settings.

Once you’ve enabled the DLL Optimizer (the second
half of the Tweaks view), you can begin moving and testing .DLLs.

    The
green items are supposed to be relatively safe to move, and you
can try additional .DLLs. If there is a problem you can easily move
the files back or just Disable the DLL Optimizer. Once again, I
must mention that I wouldn’t try this on removable storage unless
the card stays in place. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work
with the X50v’s Built-in Storage. So I stopped using this feature.

Like the Tweaks view,
the Storage Memory view is split up into separate categories: Storage
Usage, File Finder, and Databases.

Storage Usage shows
you, well, just that. You can Explore or Chart this data, but the
chart feature didn’t work quite right on my X50v.

The file finder is
somewhat useful, but there isn’t any way to stop the search once
it starts (such as my search for *.dll).

Lastly, you can look
at the Databases and their Info. In any of these subcategories,
you can delete individual files.

You can set a Custom
Explorer in the Memory Usage settings.

   
The last tab is Running Processes. And, after a delay, you
can see the running processes on your PDA. Sadly, this isn’t a realtime
list, if something changes, the only way to see that change is to
hit the Refresh button. But at least you have access to the information
(something that Microsoft doesn’t natively provide).

You can Kill and Close
applications from the Running Processes view, but be careful what
you attempt this on (as it can lock up your PDA).

Within each view,
there is an in-depth help file. Offering an explanation on not only
how to use MemMaid, but why.

MemMaid does work
just fine in Landscape mode.

HELP SUPPORT

    As I mentioned before, DinarSoft has
been outstanding with their email support. Hopefully, they can remedy
their lack of a website or a forum in the future.

BUGS AND WISHES

   
I
found no fatal errors, and my wish list is short:

• Fix
  the chart view (specifically on the X50v)
• Make
  the Running Process view run in realtime
• Fix
  the Built-in Storage issue with the DLL Optimizer
• Show
  a Total Found in the Advanced Cleaner view

PURCHASING

   
You
can buy
this software directly from Handango. The price shown is $11.99
(limited time offer).

PROS

• 
  

  Price!

• 
  

  Fast and easy cleaning

• 
  

  Ability to move cache
  locations

• 
  

  Multiple tools in one
  package

CONS

• 
  

  DLL Optimizer doesn’t
  work with Built-in Storage

• 
  

  Some graphical problems
  (Chart and File Find for example)

• 
  

  Running Processes aren’t
  shown in realtime

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

    MemMaid has really grown on me. While
not the only tool I use, it certainly has found a place in my
must-have list. For such a paltry sum, one can look over the minor
issues (as they will probably be taken care of very quickly if
DinarSoft’s support is taken into account). Can you live without
MemMaid? Yes, but you will be missing out on some great features
of your PDA, and you might as well get your moneys worth.