WHAT’S HOT

    For the Pocket PC user
who isn’t a Registry "wonk," Tweaks2K2.NET provides
all the little modifications you’d like to have in an
easy to use interface that insulates you from the
dangers of direct Registry Editing.  Even if
you’re a Registry wonk, you’ll find the program’s ease
of use to be compelling.  The price is also very
reasonable.

SETUP

    Tweaks2K2.NET installs using the standard
ActiveSync Add/Remove programs feature.  You can
install the program in Main Memory or on a Storage
Card without any significant speed issues.

PROGRAM FEATURES

The Tweaks Menu


Tweaks2K2.NET main
screen with Tweaks menu showing

    When
you start Tweaks2K2.NET, you’ll get the screen shown
above.  The entire user interface at this point
is the three menus you see on the Menu Bar. 
We’ll take each of them in turn, starting with the
Tweaks menu, which is also shown above.  The
Tweaks menu separates tweaks into six categories: 
There are System Tricks, Internet Tricks, Keyboard(s)
Tricks, System Colors (settings), Calendar (settings),
and Security (settings).  Below the tweaks are
options to do a soft-reset (often needed for the
registry settings that invoke the tweaks to become
live) and a hard-reset (which may be helpful if you
can’t remember the exact secret fraternity handshake
that resets your machine to factory settings). 
There is also an option to exit the program. 
This is particularly helpful as the Tweaks2K2.NET
interface almost always doesn’t include the Start menu
icon on the Title Bar.  I say "almost always" because, occasionally, the Start menu icon would appear as
shown below:

 
Partial Tweaks2K2.NET
screens with and without the Start menu icon showing

    I
suspect the Start menu icon isn’t supposed to be
available.  Most of the tweaks require a
soft-reset to "take" which should be done before
running any other programs.

   
The first option on the Tweaks menu is "System
Tricks."  Choosing this option calls up the
dialog you see below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Tricks dialog — Collection 1 tab

   
System Tricks are sub-divided into four "collections." 
The first, dealing with display properties, is shown
above.  You’ll also notice one of the great
features of Tweaks2K2.NET:  On the right of many
of the tweaks (those which have a purpose which isn’t
particularly intuitively obvious) there is a [?]
button.  Clicking on the [?] button calls up an
explanation for that tweak.  Below is the
explanation for "Screen Orientation."

Tweaks2K2.NET Screen
Orientation help message

   
You’ll also notice that particular option is greyed
out on my Pocket PC.  Any tweaks that don’t apply
to your particular PPC will be greyed out.  That
prevents you from applying a tweak that doesn’t work
on your PPC and may, in fact, cause problems if it was
applied.
    The remaining options under System Tricks — Collection 1
will set the System Font (the character set used
throughout the Pocket PC user interface) to Italic,
Bold, or a font other than the default Tahoma. 
There are also tweaks to turn on or off the graphical
"animation" when a window is minimized or restored, to
speed up the display by using more memory, to run
Windows Media Play in low quality mode when another
program is onscreen, to enable/disable Start Menu
animation, and to show or hide the normally hidden
"Network" folder when you’re browsing files.
    There are also three icons on the Menu Bar as shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET menu bar
icons

   
The left-most icon returns you to the main
Tweaks2K2.NET screen.  The middle icon explains
the purpose of the currently displayed screen. 
The right-most icon only appears on VGA resolution
(640×480) Pocket PCs.  It calls up the dialog box
shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET VGA tweaks
dialog

   
This dialog provides a work-around to a specific issue
with Windows Mobile 2003, Second Edition (WM2003SE)
and VGA-resolution displays:  Up until the
introduction of WM2003SE, the Pocket PC operating
systems were built on the assumption that the display
would be Quarter-VGA (QVGA) or 320×240.  Most
developers, prior to WM2003SE, also assumed QVGA. 
Microsoft programmed WM2003SE to maintain as much
compatibility with those programs as possible. 
To that end, the system assumes that any program which
doesn’t have resources which specifically mark it is
VGA resolution-compatible is written for QVGA
resolution.  The operating system fools the
program into thinking that it’s displaying on a
QVGA-resolution display and then quadruples every
graphics operation (except drawing characters) so it
fills the VGA screen.  At the same time, it runs
any character display operation through a font
resizing operation so the fonts appear in the correct
size as well, but four times as sharp.  For most
programs, this works quite well.  However, there
are some programs that actually perform quite well in
VGA resolution without this process.  Some of
these, in fact, may look better when this process is
over-ridden.  The VGA tweak dialog allows you to
specify whether a specific program will allow the
system to resize it or over-ride that process. 
As more programs are updated to full WM2003
compatibility, this tweak will become less necessary.  For the time being, it’s good to have the option.

    System Tricks — Collection 2 (the second tab) gives
you access to another set of features shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Tricks dialog — Collection 2 tab

   
The first tweak is a "slider" that allows you to set
whether the Time, Date, neither, or both appear in the
Title Bar.  As you can see from my screen
captures, I’ve already set it to show both. 
Showing both allows me to turn off the "Date" segment
on the Today Screen and use the space I gain to show
something else.  It also means that, whichever
program I happen to have on-screen at a given time, I
can still know both the time and date by looking at
the top bar.  Below that tweak is a tweak to
change how dates are displayed in their "long" format. 
Below that is the "Wake up Power off" tweak.  One
of the issues with WM2003 is that it only allocates 15
seconds to update when the system turns itself on at
midnight each day to set times and alarms.  If
you have a lot of appointments, particularly
reoccurring ones, this may not be enough time. 
The result is that your alarms don’t "fire" until you
turn your PPC on, even if that’s after the alarm time.  Setting the power off time to 60 seconds quadruples
the time and generally fixes this issue.
    Following the Wake up tweak are tweaks to set the System Font
size, narrow the scroll bars that appear to the right
and bottom of a window when it has more data than can
be displayed on-screen all at once, and a tweak to
turn on/off a warning when you insert a card while
using battery power.  (Some cards draw a lot of
power.)

    System Tricks — Collection 3 gives you access to the
tweaks shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Tricks — Collection 3 tab

   
Collection 3 of System Tweaks contains a number of
machine-specific and operating system-specific tweaks. 
You can add a contrast control to the control panel on
a Toshiba e740, enable the Bluetooth headset profile
on hp 5400 and 5500 iPAQs, make the iTask panel
transparent on Compaq h3600 iPAQs.  You can also
set ClearType on for Pocket PC 2002 models, enable
ClearType in Landscape mode for Windows Mobile 2003,
Second Edition, set the Power on time for alarm
setting at midnight (similar, but with greater control
than the setting in Collection 2), wake up in Full
Power for alarm settings, allow you to set sounds and
notifications for low battery conditions, and reset
the soft-reset counter to 0.  To be honest, I’m
not at all sure why you’d want to do the last item,
but you can if you want to.

   
System Tricks — Collection 4 allows you to move
Shared Direct Link Libraries (utility routines used by
a number of programs, abbreviated DLL) out of main
memory and into a Storage Card.  It calls up the
screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Tweaks — Collection 4 tab

     
One of the least known bits of Windows CE lore is that
Windows CE will use DLLs on any storage media provided
the path to that folder is listed in the System Path
Registry Entry.  This screen does all the work
for you to allow you to move those shared DLLs to
another location.  Moving the DLLs frees up Main
Memory, but, because these DLLs are used by a lot of
built-in programs, you’ll have to move them to a
location that is always present; either to a ROM File
Store or to a Storage Card that you always have
installed on your Pocket PC.

   
The second option on the Tweaks menu is "Internet
Tricks."  It calls up the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Internet
Tricks — PIE tab

   
The PIE tab allows you to tweak a number of Pocket
Internet Explorer (abbreviated PIE) settings.  You can set the browser identification string used by
PIE to fool web sites into thinking you’re using
desktop Internet Explorer 6.0, use ClearType with PIE,
store PIE temporary files on a Storage Card or other
media, save AvantGo files on a Storage Card or other
media, change NetFront’s browser ID string to IE 6.0
or PIE, and increase the number of files you can
simultaneously download to 8.

   
The "Security" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Internet
Tricks — Security tab

   
The Security tab lets you cache (use memory to improve
loading performance) SSL (Secure) web pages. 
Cached pages are stored on your PPC and could be read
if it were lost or stolen.  You can turn off
ActiveX controls or scripting to prevent web-based
programs from running.  Finally, you can show
scripting errors.

   
The "Inbox" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Internet
Tricks — Inbox tab

   
The Inbox tab lets you tweak the behavior of the
built-in Inbox (sometimes called Messaging instead)
application.  You can increase the font size used
to display messages, save attachments to a Storage
Card or other media to free up Main Memory, and turn
the
Secure Sockets Layer off.

   
The "Network" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Internet
Tricks — Inbox tab

   
The Network tab lets you determine whether the wireless
Ethernet icon (in WM2003) will appear on the Title
Bar.  Some Pocket PCs have other means of getting
to WiFi settings and hiding this icon will show more
of the program title.  You can also maximize the
amount of data a sending computer can send (called the
"TCP window") to your Pocket PC which improves
performance on large downloads.  Finally you can
disable WM2003′s "Zero Configuration" network setup
for WiFi connections.  You should only do this if
the automatic setup is interfering with the obscure
settings your network is using.

   
The third option in the Tweaks menu is "Keyboard(s)
Tricks."  Selecting this option opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Keyboard
Tricks — Default tab

   
The Default tab of Keyboard Tricks lets you set which
keyboard is automatically enabled when a soft-reset is
done.  Normally, this would be the standard
QWERTY keyboard, but, as you can see, most other input
methods can be set to the default instead. 
Tweaks2K2.NET even includes the ability to set as
default some popular third-party input methods. 
One caveat:  If you set the default input method
to an add-on, make sure you reset it if you uninstall
that program.  It won’t crash the machine, but
obviously, the default input method will be
unavailable.

   
The "Hide" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Keyboard
Tricks — Hide tab (with Input Method pop-up showing)

   
The Hide tab lets you set which input methods will
show in the Input Method pop-up menu (shown popped-up
above).  This is helpful if you never use some of
the built-in input methods and just would prefer not
to have to ignore them in the pop-up menu.

   
The "Misc" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Keyboard
Tricks — Misc tab

    The only option in the Misc tab currently is the
option to increase the number of words the Input
Method suggests from a maximum of 4 to 6.

   
The "Skin" tab opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Keyboard
Tricks — Skin tab

   
The Skin tab is really a sort of catch-all for the
appearance of the Input Method.  In my case, it
only has one option and that is to change the
appearance of the keyboard drawing.  Other Input
Methods may have other options under the skin tab.

   
The fourth option on the Tweaks menu is "System
Colors."  It opens the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Colors

   
The System Colors screen allows you to set the color
of each of the user interface elements shown above. 
Clicking on the red box on the left enables and
disables the color change.  Clicking on the white
box on the right calls up the "color picker" dialog
shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET System
Colors — color picker

   
You can select a color from the basic color set or
pick a "Custom color" and be allowed to set the
particular color yourself.  Once the color is
selected, the white box to the right of the option
will change to the new color choice.

   
The fifth option on the Tweaks menu is "Calendar."  Choosing it will call up the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Calendar
screen

   
The Calendar tweaks allow you set when your working
day starts and ends and which days of the week are
considered work days.  These affect how the
built-in calendar program displays information and
sets appointment times.

   
The sixth option on the Tweaks menu is "Security."  Choosing it will call up the screen shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Security
Tricks

   
The Security Tricks screen gives you access to options
which hide icons in the Program section of the Start
menu and the first option that allows you to prevent
programs from being added to the Pocket PC.  These are of use to corporate IT managers to enforce
company policy concerning what devices will be allowed
to do.

The Info Menu

   
The "Info" menu gives you access to two utility
screens:  The first, showing RAM use, is shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET RAM Usage
screen

   
The RAM Usage screen shows Main Memory use in terms of
Storage and Program memory.  Storage memory
stores files and programs as a part of the overall
file system on the Pocket PC.  Program memory is
used by running programs.  The screen also shows
the OEM Name (built into the ROM) and the Device Name
(set by you through ActiveSync or through the Control
Panel) and the number of times your PPC has be soft
reseted.

    The Battery Info screen is shown below:

Tweaks2K2.NET Battery
Info screen

    The Battery Info screen shows the level of charge of
the internal battery as well as information about the
operating system.

The About Menu

   
The final menu in Tweaks2K2.NET is the "About" menu
with the two options shown above.  "About" shows
you the version information and the contact
information for bug reports.  "Registration" shows you the initial key you need to get the
registration key and allows you to enter the
registration code when you receive it.

HELP SUPPORT

    Tweaks2K2.NET has context
help sprinkled throughout the program.  Each
screen has an explanation dialog which is called up by
tapping on the question mark on the menu bar. 
Most items (those that require explanation or warning)
also have a question mark next to them which will
explain that item.  There is no additional help,
but you can contact the developer via e-mail to report
issues, bugs, and feature requests.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

   
Tweaks2K2.NET requires 1.33MB of Storage Memory for the
program and 2.32MB of Program Memory to run.  It
runs on Pocket PC (2000), Pocket PC 2002, Windows
Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 2003, Second Edition
Pocket PCs.  It is fully compatible with
WM2003SE.  If you are running it on a pre-2003
OS, you will also need to install the .NET Compact
Framework from Microsoft.  The .NET version of
Tweaks2K2 only runs on ARM processors with English,
German, French, Portuguese or Spanish ROMs.

BUGS AND WISHES

   
I did run into one minor problem while running the
program:  In certain circumstances, the Start
Menu would appear.  There didn’t appear to be any
reason for it’s appearance or subsequent
disappearance.  Tapping around a bit would
eventually hide or reveal it.
    The other issue I had with the program is that it takes some
time for various screens in the program to render.  This is a bit odd because they aren’t very complex.
    Of course, I also have something I’d like to see in a future
version:  It would be nice if
there were a way to store all the tweaks you’ve
decided to perform in a sort of configuration file.  That way, if you decide to start over with a
hard-reset or you get a new Pocket PC, you could
perform all those tweaks en-masse rather than going to
each section and re-doing each individual change.

PURCHASING

    You can purchase Tweaks2K2.NET from the pocketnow Store for $15.50.  There
is also a 14 day trial version.

PROS

• Eliminates
  the dangers of Registry Editing
• Provides
  all of the important hacks in one place and
• Provides
  them in an easy to use interface
• Also
  provides access to soft and hard resets
• Works well
  with WM2003SE
• Is very
  affordable

CONS

• Start Menu
  icon appears and disappears randomly
• Takes some time to various
  display screens

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

    As a hacker and tweaker
from Day 1, I’m not afraid of Registry Editing. 
However, I still use Tweaks2K2 to modify my PPC to my
tastes.  I haven’t even loaded a Registry Editor
after my last hard-reset.  Non-hackers will find
Tweaks2K2 gives you just what you need to adjust the
Pocket PC user interface in a huge variety of ways. 
Hacker-types will appreciate the ease of use including
not having to look up those really long Registry key
names.  From minor nudges all the way to
significant hacks, Tweaks2K2 provides the Pocket PC
user with the power you need without all the hassle.

All screenshots in this
review taken using
SOTI’s Pocket Controller Pro