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WHAT'S
HOT
Winner of a 2002 Pocket PC Summit award for best dictionary, Lextionary
is currently one of the most complete and thorough English-English dictionary,
it contains a total of
144,308 entries, over 335,000 links between words and over 1.9 million
words. Now at version 2.0, Lextionary now offers more added features
like ClearType fonts and word look up from other applications among
others.
SETUP
Installing Lextionary into your Pocket PC is quite straightforward and
easy, it doesn't differ from any other Pocket PC program. You simply
connect your Pocket PC to your desktop PC/laptop, run the Lextionary
setup file and choose which location (main memory or storage card) you
want to the program files to be placed. A program icon of Lextionary
will be created and placed automatically in your programs folder.
Using a highly advanced compression method, the developer managed to
squeeze Lextionary’s relatively large database to a more manageable
size, around 9MB, the program itself takes up only 157KB of memory RAM
space.
PROGRAM
FEATURES
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to use Lextionary,
upon launching of the program, simply enter a word on the search bar
located at the upper part of the screen and tap on the “Go” icon, once
you have done this, the definition and all synonyms of the word that
you entered will be displayed. In the word description area, all synonyms
and related words are hyper texted so you can easily tap on it and jump
from one word to another. There are also a few icons displayed on the
word description windows (the square and triangle icons), with these
icons, you can immediately jump to antonyms and other description that
are part of the word you looked up. For those who have trouble pronouncing
or is just starting to study the English language, Lextionary also includes
phonetic pronunciations of all of the 144,308 word entries.
Most electronic dictionaries requires you to input the exact spelling of a word for a successful search, even an error in just one letter will get you a “word not found” message. I was extremely pleased to find out that this is not the case with Lextionary, in the event of a wrong spelling; Lextionary will present/suggest to you a batch of words that comes close to the word that you typed. Another nice thing about Lextionary is that you’ll have no problems searching for a word, whether you’re looking for a specific word, or a group of words, Lextionary’s advance search feature takes care of this. Those who are familiar with MS DOS will feel right at home with the advance search feature of this program, in a nutshell, you will use the “?” and “*” characters to substitute for unknown letters. The “?” character is for a single letter while the “*” character is for multiple letters, this feature is quite useful when you’re playing word guessing/puzzle games.
One of the new features in version 2.0 which I was looking forward to is the ability to look up a word from a different program as this would be the killer feature for me, the ability to look up a word from any ebook/document reader would be very useful indeed, but I was sorely disappointed by the implementation of this feature, not only did this feature work on only a few programs, but the steps required to use this feature is too tedious and complicated to be useful. Out of the many programs that I tested this feature on, it only worked on MS Reader and Pocket Word, it didn’t work on programs like Palm Reader Pro, TomeRaider, Adobe PDF Reader and NetFront3. And to even use the look up feature, Lextionary must be running in the background and is required to be assigned to a hardware button
HELP
SUPPORT
The help file that comes included with program explains the basic features
very well but fails to explain some of the more advanced features, specifically
the word lookup feature. However, getting on line help from the developer
is a pleasure since I get prompt and helpful responses to all of my
inquiries over email. You can visit Revolution Software’s website (http://revolution.cx/lex.htm)
to learn more about Lextionary
OPTIONS
One small albeit very neat feature that I use frequently in Lextionary
is the word randomizer function. Sort of like a “word a day” feature,
it’s nice to randomly look up a word and learn/guess its meaning, as
English is my 3rd language; this comes quite handy in my
quest to master the English language.
SYSTEM
REQUIREMENTS
Currently,
Lextionary is 100% compatible with all Pocket PCs that are running PPC
2K2, this program should also work on devices running WM 2K3 but as
WM 2K3 is a fairly new OS, a few minor bugs might occur here and there.
As such, the developer has assured me that any WM 2K3 related bug reported
to him will be issued a fix quickly. Lextionary can be installed on
either the main RAM or storage card; it requires 9.5 MB of storage memory
and needs around 1.5 MB in order to run.
BUGS
AND WISHES
The look up word feature of Lextionary needs a lot of work and improvement,
at its current form, this feature is close to useless, the steps required
to take advantage of the word look up feature is too tedious and it
only works on a few programs. Speed is also an issue in Lextionary,
depending on the number of synonyms of the word that you did a search
on; it can take a while for the search results to be displayed. For
example, do a search on the word “run” and you’ll see that it takes
more than 30 seconds to display the search results.
PURCHASING
You can purchase Lextionary directly from the developer’s website, they
are currently running a discount promotion for Lextionary where you
can purchase a license for just $13.99. The price is basically a steal
compared to other dictionary/thesaurus programs so I strongly urge you
to take advantage of this promo while it’s still available. You can
also purchase this program from www.handango.com
and www.pocketgear.com
PROS
- Easy to use
- Advanced word search options
- ClearType support available (For PPC 2K2 devices)
- Reasonably priced
CONS
- Word Look up feature from other programs doesn't work
- Can take a long time to search for a word
- Help file needs to be improved
OVERALL
IMPRESSION
Even though there are still a couple of bugs, Lextionary is by far one
of the most impressive piece of reference software that I have come
across; its GUI is very simple and straightforward, anyone can use this
program without even having to read the manual, plus its large database
ensures that its content well up to date and complete. The best thing
about this is that it won't cost you an arm or a leg as the price is
very reasonable (less than $20), bugs aside, anyone who’s in the market
for a dictionary program should seriously consider Lextionary. I just
hope the developer makes good on their promise on fixing the bugs that
I have mentioned.
