Marketplace Pick
Market Pick
Mastersoft Mobile Solutions' My Last Cigarette v3.04
WHAT'S
HOT
What's hot about My Last Cigarette is that
it is, for the most part, the only way you can get your geeky Pocket
PC to help you accomplish something as ungeeky as quitting smoking.
While some of you may, like me, enjoy several cigarettes while in front
of your computer finishing a paper or working on a programming project,
this is about as much as smoking ever has to do with computers. But
this doesn't mean your computer can't be taught to understand smoking.
My Last Cigarette understands it very well, in fact. It knows all of
the facts related to smoking and it is with this unfortunate knowledge
that it will convince you that your habit is dangerous and just plain
stupid.
SETUP
Setup of My Last Cigarette is no biggie. Know
how to make toast? Then you can install My Last Cigarette. Unless you've
never installed a program onto your Pocket PC before. In that case,
I'm afraid you'll have to do some research on that.
PROGRAM
FEATURES
My Last Cigarette is a tool for smokers
who really want to quit. As its name suggests, it is to be
used after smoking your last cigarette. After finishing your last and
final smoke, just enter the information that is needed on the 'My Personal
Settings' screen and you'll be ready to go. You'll need to tell the
program how many cigarettes you were smoking per day, how much a pack
of 20 cigarettes costs in your area, the date and time that you quit,
the date and time that you first started smoking (good luck 
),
and the average life expectancy in your country. In America this is
just over 77.
For the sake of reviewing this application, I have
convinced My Last Cigarette that the last cigarette I smoked was on
May 20th, 2004 (although, regretfully, I'm still smoking).
There are six helpful screens in My Last Cigarette which are accessible via the buttons along the top of the application screen. The first of these screens is the 'Non Smoker Stats' screen. Here you'll find how long it has been since you were a smoker, the number of cigarettes that you haven't smoked since then, and the disgusting total number of cigarettes that you smoked prior to quitting. I smoked 8,754!!!
The next screen is the 'Life Expectancy' screen. Here My Last Cigarette
will tell you how long you can now expect to live and exactly how much
your life expectancy has increased compared to if you were still smoking.
If watching the length of time you are to be on this earth increase
doesn't help you quit, I don't know what will.
Here you will also see what your chance of having
a heart attack or lung cancer is, compared to that of a smoker. I am
at 99% on both of these! This is because I've just quit, less than a
month ago, and my body remains unhealthy for the time being as I begin
to recover from my horrible past.
The next screen is the 'Financial Benefits' screen. Here you are informed as to how much money you have saved by not smoking and how much money you will be saving each week, each month, and each year in your new life as a non-smoker.
This next screen is my favorite. Its the 'Vital Signs' screen and it tells you how your blood circulation is doing and where your long term lung health is at. You'll see that mine is still very much in the red. This is something that's going to improve slowly and steadily. You can also see how much carbon monoxide is in your blood (none for me!), your expected craving level, and how much nicotine is in your body. This is, in my opinion, very helpful and motivating information which a non-smoker can continually watch in order to witness their own return to health. Awesome!
Moving right along, the next screen is the 'Health Matters' screen and it is here that each day you will find a motivating and helpful quote or bit of information. Today My Last Cigarette is reminding me of how dirty and gross it was to be a smoker. You said it, My Last Cigarette... those old cigarette butts I would find under the seat of my car were just plain gross.
Last but certainly not least is the 'Today's Evidence' screen. This screen can be downright scary. Here you'll find pictures of actual organs which have been ruined by cigarettes and have caused death. You'll also see a creepy little red number representing the number of smoking related deaths since you quit. 277,325 smoking related deaths have occurred in the less than one month since I quit smoking! Scary.
HELP
SUPPORT
As far as I can see, there aren't any help
files that come with My Last Cigarette. However, help files would be
unnecessary. This program is very straight forward. After filling
in the details of your last cigarette its just a matter of clicking
the various buttons along the top of the application and viewing the
information presented on those screens. Its as easy as that.
SYSTEM
REQUIREMENTS
The Mastersoft Mobile Solutions web site
says that My Last Cigarette will run on any Pocket PC with 32MB
or more main memory available. EEEKS!!! Why would it require so
much memory, you ask? Well, it doesn't. Not quite anyway. It does, however,
require both the .NET Compact Framework (2.4 MB storage memory required)
and Microsoft SQLCE 2.0 (1.9 MB storage required). Both of these applications
will be installed along with My Last Cigarette--you don't have to go
track them down yourself. The My Last Cigarette application itself requires
under 650 KBs of storage memory but running the My Last Cigarette application
will use up almost 4 MB of program memory.
BUGS
AND WISHES
The only complaint that I have is that My
Last Cigarette is a bit useless unless you have in fact smoked your
last cigarette. It would be helpful if I could see how my life
and my body is being effected by slowing down my smoking habit,
just in case I'm too deep into it to try and pull off quitting cold
turkey.
PURCHASING
You can purchase Mastersoft Mobile Solutions'
My Last Cigarette by
clicking here. The price tag is a very acceptable $9.95.
PROS
Helps you quit smoking!
Provides very useful information that would be otherwise hard to find
Personalizes your information according to when you smoked your last cigarette and what your smoking habits were
CONS
Only for those who have smoked their last cigarette--not nearly as helpful to those just looking to slow down or gradually quit
Requires the .NET Framework and SQLCE 2.0 (included with the setup file)
Uses a lot of memory for such a small program
OVERALL
IMPRESSION
If you're serious about quitting smoking,
My Last Cigarette is for you! You may think you know why you should
quit and how unhealthy your dirty habit is but until you use this program
you don't know the half of it! If motivation is what you need or if
you want to be able to continually watch your progress as you live life
as a non-smoker then this could very well be the most valuable program
you ever put on your handheld.
