INTRODUCTION

    “What is the weather going
to be like tomorrow… or what can I expect next Tuesday?”  That
type of question is so common around my home and work
that I was looking for weather forecast Today Screen
applets long before there were any.  Fortunately,
that has changed and there are now several.  Still,
having reliable, easy to access, fast updating weather
forecasts is vital enough to me that, when I saw the
Spb Software House announcement for their new Weather
applet, I immediately downloaded the trial and requested
to do the review.

WHAT’S HOT

    Spb Weather supports a wide
variety of user control and customizing:  You
can choose from different “skins” for different looks.  You
can choose several different locations and even create
custom locations.  You can even select which
web sites are used for downloading weather forecast
information.
    Spb Weather also integrates
right in to Spb Pocket Plus.  By integrating into Pocket Plus it takes up
less driver memory space in Windows CE.  It also takes up less screen real
estate.
    In addition to what you can see, Spb Weather is highly optimized.  Weather
forecast data downloads very quickly.  (A five day forecast requires only
400 bytes of data transfer.)

PROGRAM FEATURES

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Spb
Weather can display as a separate Today Screen
applet…
(Click on the image above for high resolution capture)

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…using
the Spb Pocket Plus Today Plug-In Settings
dialog.

Tapping
on a day within the Today Screen forecast
shows the details for that day.

Tapping
and holding in the Weather applet area brings
up a pop up menu.
The menu allows you to manually refresh the weather data, select the displayed
city, select the skin, choose the city name header location, and call up the
Options dialog.

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style="">The Cities panel in the Options dialog lets you choose which cities
are displayed and in what order.

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When
you add a new city to show weather for, you
can select from a known city database either
by postal code or Country, Region, City drop
downs.
You can also enter a city not it the database by specifying the postal code
and city name.

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The
View panel of the Options dialog allows you
to choose from 4-day view…

…5
day view…

…7
day view…

…or
multi-line view.

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You
can also choose a style from the default
skin…

…the
line skin…

…the
pixel skin…

…the
smiles skin…

…or
the tech skin.  The Spb web site also
has href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/weather/skins.html?en" target="_blank">some
additional skins.
Additionally, you can choose to show all city names in tabs, just the selected
city, or no header at all.

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The
Units panel of the Options dialog allows
you to select from English or Metric units
or any combination of both.

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The
Sync panel of the Options dialog allows you
to choose when weather data is updated.

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The
Stats panel of the Options dialog shows you
which sites are used for weather data and
when the last update(s) occurred.

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The
Options dialog also has a Tools menu which
allows you to view the “About” information,
register the program, add or remove skins,
and add or remove weather data sources.

HELP SUPPORT

    style="font-family: verdana;">Spb Weather comes with built-in help that is also
accessible through the Pocket PC Help application.  The
help is very complete and includes links to further
information such as how to create your own skins.  There
is also href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/weather/Spb%20Weather%20User%20Manual.pdf" target="_blank">a
full user guide (in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) that
you can download.  Spb also has a “ href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/weather/?en" target="_blank">virtual tour” of
the program on their web site that provides a good
overview of the program.  In addition, Spb has href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/weather/support.html?en" target="_blank">a support
page on their site to allow users to pose technical
support questions.

OPTIONS

    Any option settings not
mentioned in the product features section that are
worth emphasizing? If not, skip this section.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

    face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Spb Weather runs on any
Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003 (including Second
Edition) Pocket PC.  The program fully supports
WM2003SE including HiDPI graphics and screen rotation.
    The program takes up 2.0MB of Program Memory to run and 1.6MB of
Storage Memory to install.  Spb Weather can be installed on a storage card
or on a File Store without any loss of performance (even though Spb Pocket Plus
cannot.)

BUGS AND WISHES

    I
wasn’t able to find any flaws or glitches in my testing face="Verdana" size="2"> face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">.  The only items I can think
of to improve the program would be to add satellite
and radar overviews to the existing forecast options.  At
least one other weather applet I know of has these
options and the data is available from the same weather
sources as the program already uses.  Unfortunately,
downloading radar and satellite images would also
increase the update times.

PURCHASING

    You
can purchase Spb Weather href="http://www.handango.com/pocketnow/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=287&jid=D6C4EE4DF11X8D9AFCB9CA98F377EAEX&platformId=2&productType=2&productId=157838&sectionId=0&catalog=30" target="_blank">from
the pocketnow Store for $14.95.  There is
also a href="http://www.handango.com/pocketnow/PlatformTrialDownload.jsp?siteId=287&jid=D6C4EE4DF11X8D9AFCB9CA98F377EAEX&platformId=2&productType=2&productId=157838" target="_blank">14-day
free trial version available.

PROS

• style="font-family: verdana;"> face="Verdana" size="2">Supports HiDPI screens with detailed graphics
• style="font-weight: bold;">Integrates directly into Spb Pocket Plus
• style="font-weight: bold;">Gives a full 7-day forecast

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CONS

• Does not
  have weather radar or satellite imaging views

Value
Ease of Use
Features
Overall

What
do these ratings mean?

OVERALL IMPRESSION

    Spb Software House currently makes a good
portion of what I believe to be the best software for the Pocket PC
available.  Whenever they bring out a new program, I have high
expectations for it.  Fortunately, they continue to bring out
software that meets and usually exceeds my expectations.  Spb
Weather is a good example.
    This is the first weather program I’ve seen that gives a full
7-day forecast and the first that downloads up to 10 days ahead.  It does
everything I need a weather forecast application to do.  Further, the integration
into Spb Pocket Plus allows me to free up some resources.
    I wholeheartedly recommend Spb Weather to anyone who needs
or wants easily accessable, easily readable, quickly updatable weather on their
Today Screen.