INTRODUCTION


  Remember when traveling used to be fun? Really… it was… back before the days of body scanners, long security lines and airlines that didn’t have pillows on board so they can save a few cents. Today, travel is difficult and the average business traveler usually arrives at their destination rather weary. A few software publishers have made applications available that try to ease the pain of traveling, most notably Worldmate 2006 and Fizz Traveler. Now, SPB has entered the Right now, Worldmate 2006 Pro is my travel software of choice… will SPB Traveler convince me to change flights?game with their newest application, SPB Traveler. SPB is a well-respected member of the Windows Mobile community and I was excited to see what SPB Traveler brings to the table.

WHAT’S HOT


  As a new application, SPB Traveler has an all-new list of features:

  • World time
  • Weather forecast
  • Currency converter
  • Unit converter
  • Clothing sizes
  • Dial codes
  • Tip calculator
  • Flight assistant
  • Meeting planner


SETUP


  The setup process is pretty
normal for a Windows Mobile device.  Just run the .exe file from your desktop PC and the application will install via ActiveSync or the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC).

   This is not a mistake… SPB Traveler requires 5.7MB of storage space… YIKES!!! Fortunately, you can install it to a storage card.



First task… add the city you live in and cities that you travel to.

Since I live in Orlando, Florida that was the first city I added. You can enter cities by typing in part of the name, searching by country or even by airport.

My next trip includes stops in Amsterdam and Zurich so I added those cities as well. You can see that the application shows the time for each city and will also show the currency rate once updated.

The view can be changed, but I found that the "Wide" setting worked well. After setting up the cities you can update the weather and currency rates.

Unfortunately, the currency rates and weather did not update while my Treo was connected to the PC, but I think this is the fault of WMDC since it worked fine once I disconnected it. Once setup is complete the today screen plug-in appears.

That’s better! Here is the today screen plug-in as it is supposed to appear.