Weathering Heights: a comparison of selected popular weather programs

I wonder what Emily Bronte and her characters would have thought about downloading weather reports from circling satellites and reading them on electronic handheld devices. Weather was certainly an important aspect in the setting of her 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights, and weather is still an important element in our daily lives. Accordingly, it is not just a matter of convenience but often a matter of vital importance to have access to accurate weather information. What could be handier than having instant access right on your Today screen?

In this article, I will discuss five of the most popular dedicated weather programs. I will also mention examples of multi-functional programs that contain a weather component along with some free programs for your consideration.

Dedicated Weather Programs

Dedicated weather programs only do weather as opposed to multi-purpose programs that have weather as one of their many functions. A nice feature about dedicated programs is that they are Today screen oriented so that you have instant access to weather information as soon as you turn on your machine. The multi-purpose programs are usually not visible on the desktop and you have to do some tapping to get to them.

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Figure 1. Screen shot of SPB Weather in five day mode in its own Today screen panel. SPB Weather can also be configured to be a tab on the Pocket Plus panel. The right screen shows weather details for a particular day. Note the last icon in the PocketPlus panel below the weather panel is for Weather Center for Windows Mobile.

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Figure 2. PocketWeather shows data in a five day mode. You can display more detailed information by tapping on any day as indicated in the screen on the right.

Here are some important considerations you may wish to use in evaluating which program best suits your needs.

• Centigrade and Fahrenheit selectable
• Icon themes available
• Selectable layout with differing number of days and amount of data displayed
• Cities automatically scrolled, if selected
• Automatic vs manual data update
• Offers automatic weather alerts
• Main memory and/or memory card installation
• Moon data available
• Satellite weather maps
• Ease of entering target cities

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Figure 3. The left screen shows WeatherPanel in a seven-day mode. Tapping on a day will reveal its details as shown on the right.

As it turns out, which I didn’t know when I began this inquiry, most of the programs offer similar features. They all display basic weather information as expected and take up about the same amount of RAM (1.3-1.69 MB). But, there are some important differences that you may wish to take into consideration. For instance, I do not appreciate programs that demand main memory installation. Actually, Weather Today is the only program that requires main memory installation, but it does have virtues that the other programs lack.

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Figure 4. Weather Center offers a full screen display with six days of weather. It cannot be displayed as a Today screen panel. Tapping on an individual day (right screen) brings up some more detail, but not as much as displayed for the current day.

Another consideration is that you may not want a program that automatically installs itself as a panel on your Today screen taking up valuable real estate that you would prefer allocated to appointments or tasks. In that case, you would avoid Weather Today, Weather Panel, and Pocket Weather. Instead, you may wish to acquire a program that runs independently and is only a tap away as an icon on your Today screen desktop. In this case, you would have to decide among SPB Weather and Weather Center For Windows Mobile.

You may just want to know what the temperature ranges will be for any given day and whether or not it’s going to rain. In that case SPB Weather would be a good choice of a simple, no-nonsense program without a lot of detail that you can view in its own desktop panel. It will also sit as an icon on the desktop launcher or you can specify it as a tab in the Pocket Plus launcher.

Perhaps weather maps are an important consideration to you, in which case you would have to choose between Weather Today and Pocket Weather.

If you like action on your Today screen with animated icons, your choice would have to be Weather Today. Weather Today also offers the possibility of changing the background to conform to the weather of the city currently displayed, which is a fun feature.

Weather alerts for rain and snow storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods can be life-saving information. In view of the importance of this issue, it is remarkable that only Weather Today offers this feature.

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Figure 5. The Stocks & Weather Today program above features programmable stock quotes, animated weather icons, and changeable skins that match the current weather. Tapping on the current day’s weather icon brings up a text screen with a more detailed forecast.

I don’t know why the number six is the magic number for allowed cities, but the majority of the programs set this limit. The only two that do not have a limit are SPB Weather and Weather Panel, making them the programs of choice if you need to track the weather in more than a half dozen sites.

The number of days a program will display could be another factor in your choice of a weather program. Some automatically dictate the number of the days, and others allow you to select the number of days.

The programs vary in the amount of technical weather data they offer. For instance, Weather today only displays temperature ranges for a five-day forecast with an animated icon for current conditions. Tapping the animated icon brings up a text narrative that includes conditions over the next five days. SPB Weather takes a minimalist approach with temperature ranges on the display panel. Tapping a particular day will display wind and humidity information. This is usually enough information for most people, but if you want more, it’s available in other programs such as Weather Center for Windows Mobile Weather Panel, and Pocket Weather.

For more in-depth weather data, try tapping the desktop icon for Weather Center and a full screen of weather information displays with such items as heat index, pressure, dew point, sunrise, UV, wind chill, humidity, visibility, sunset, and wind, but no information on the moon. For that, you’ll want to get Weather Panel or Pocket Weather. If you are really into moon phases, check out Kai’s Today Moon Phases, available from Handango for $5.

Prices for these dedicated weather programs range from $7.95 to as high as $16.95. SBP Weather is a nice adjunct to its companion program PocketPlus, just as Pocket Weather is part of the SBSH desktop suite and works well with iLauncher. Weather Today is the flashiest with its fun animated icons and themes that change to match the weather conditions. Weather Center for Windows Mobile is a full screen stand-alone application that gives the most technical weather information. Weather Panel stands out because it has unlimited cities and can display up to a seven day forecast with temperature graphs and moon percentages.

Multi-Functional Programs
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Figure 6. Journal Bar from OmegaOne will track up to 14 cities with a 5 day forecast, along with 200 stocks, news, sports, TV, and movies.

Several programs include weather as one of their components that you can also think about, but because they do more, they are more expensive. For example, Express One from Handmark costs $69 for a one year subscription. But it will give you other valuable services such as tracking stocks, news, maps and directions, address and reverse phone directory, movies, dictionary, and sports. You can buy an individual weather component for $19.99, but I urge you to consider the entire package because of its incredible usefulness and access to a wide array of information. Another similar program is Brand-n-Go from www.actionengine.com, that, in addition to weather, will give you news, restaurants, movies, directions, shopping, stocks, sports, and eBay online for $49, no subscription required.

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Figure 7. Brand-n-Go is a multi-functional program for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone with a weather component. The right screen is a Smartphone view of current weather. Scroll down for a five day forecast.

FizzWeather is a standalone weather program that costs $14.95. Alternatively, you can purchase FizzTraveler and get the weather component included for $19.95. Another multi-function program I recommend is WorldMate that is like having a travel agent in your pocket and has a good weather bureau too, but it’s a bit pricey for all its functionality at $99.95 per year subscritption.

Freebies

If you are looking for a barebones weather program lacking many of the features mentioned, you may wish to try either Weather Info or Weather to Go. For instance, Weather to Go only allows you to track three cities. Both are available as free downloads from Handango.com.

If you want to take the time and expense of browsing for your weather information, you can get it online from resources such as www.weather.com, weather.yahoo.com, www.accuweather.com, and www.wunderground.com.

Are you a text message junkie? If so, you can Google your weather by sending a message to GOOGL and putting W and a zip or city and state in the message box. In a couple of seconds, you’ll get a weather report. It could cost you online time though. You can also get a weather report by keying in 4INFO with the requested city data.

Conclusion

There are many choices for weather retrieval programs you can install, each with varying features that may make the decision of which to buy a difficult one. Some are standalone products, and others are part of a suite of applications. Some give minimal information while others offer more depth. The number of cities and days displayed vary. Customization is emphasized in some more than others. Some are subscription services; others are free. I hope that this article will help you in selecting the program that will turn PPC your into a veritable weather bureau.

To make it easy, all of the programs mentioned above are available from www.handango.com. In the Handango site, select Pocket PC and search on “weather.” Sixty five choices will appear with descriptions and prices from which you may make your selection.