Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

I often receive questions (example here) about the possibilities of installing the same application on more than one memory card to be used on the same computer. An example: you’d like to use, say, the excellent Resco Picture Viewer to review all your shots on your (several) memory cards you use in your digital camera but you wouldn’t like to install it in the main storage of your PDA to save memory (or to avoid for example filesys.exe compactions). You can safely install, in this case, Resco Picture Viewer on all your memory cards also used by your digicam. Whenever you insert any memory card that also has the viewer installed on it, you’ll be able to start it right from there.

This was only one, pretty trivial example of the usability of this trick.

In general, you can absolutely safely install your apps to any number of memory cards (assuming they have the same in-PDA name like "SD Card" or "Storage Card" - that is, you can't interchange CF and SD cards because they have different path names.)

To do this, you have two choices:

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UPDATE (06/06/2006): In the meantime, .NET Compact Framework Version 2.0 SP1 Beta has been released. It supports installation to storage cards; the main storage usage, then, remains at about 1M.

The standard installer is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6548dd53-a418-42d9-a481-19ba3ceca1a6&displaylang=en . I've made the individual CAB files (so that you don't need to download he entire installation package) available at http://www.winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/CF2SP1/ .

You should prefer using it to the standard, "old" CF2 so that you can avoid the laborous relocation.

For historical reasons, I still keep the original article, which is as follows:

One of the biggest complaints with Microsoft's Compact Framework 2 (CF2 for short) (and, consequently, with programs relying on it - Hitchhiker, SMS Notifier, Webby, IBE Mail etc.) has always been its storage needs, which, by default, is some 5.4 Mbytes. See for example this thread for users' opinions on the memory consumption on CF2 and their subsequent not wanting to install it.

I've always tried to reduce the main memory load on Pocket PC - with great success. Just search for the word-start "relocat" in the Pocket PC Magazine Expert Blog and on my old homepage for some examples of them. No wonder I've also decided to look into this, so far, unsolved problem to greatly help my fellow Pocket PC users. And, after a day's work and testing, I can present you a 100% working solution, which has been thoroughly tested on four of my WM2003+ PDA's, all with success. This IS a big thing, considering that internal memory is still precious, even with most Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) Pocket PC's. (For example, most WM5 PPC's are shipped with 128M of ROM, of which in general 40-45 Mbytes is free.) The situation is even worse with pre-WM5 Pocket PC's, where the available RAM is very rarely (only with devices shipped with 128 Mbytes of RAM) over 50 Mbytes, from which CF2 takes away 5.4 Mbytes.

Note that this will work on all Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition devices that are able to run CF2 (that is, all WM2003+ devices, including WM5).

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I've added this AximSite thread link to the article. It's certainly worth checking out - it contains some new benchmark data and links to beemer's, probably the most active participant in the Widcomm-for-the-x51v project, new CPU/battery usage utilities.

Also, the article has also made to the Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage.

Battery life is very important with PDA's, especially if you don't have any chance to charge them or swap batteries while on the move. Then, every additional minute you can squeeze out from the battery may be important. In this article, I show you what you can do in order to optimize battery life.

Also, I show you how much power the backlight, the wireless units, the buzzer/speaker etc. consume. A lot of plain wrong urban legends (for example, the question of disabling the infrared receive or the Bluetooth unit) are still being widely considered thruth – in this article, I explain why they are not true (any more).

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An often-asked question concerns how you can set up direct links to the control panel applets (CPL's for short) in Start/Settings.

What's the point in all this, you may ask. Why not simply tap Start and, then, Settings and, finally, the icon you want to execute?

Yes, for a casual user, there's not much need in creating self-standing links to these files. There're, however, cases when this can prove really useful – for example, the case of including them in Today launcher plug-ins that, otherwise, don't let access to any of these applets otherwise. A well-known example of plug-ins like those is Resco File Explorer's excellent Today plug-in or in the free cLaunch. (Please see this (alternatives: iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand) for more info on these excellent applications and the alternatives.)

Most of these settings are invoked from a central dialog file, \Windows\cplmain.cpl. Some additional, custom settings may have been put in a separate file, \Windows\mycpl.cpl. Finally, third-party applications that install their own settings dialogs create their own .cpl files inside the \Windows directory. For example, SOTi Pocket Controller (see this article on it) creates a file DeviceConfig.cpl, Mad Programmer's FileDialogChanger (see this article on it) uses a file named filedlgchg.cpl to offer the user the File Dialog Changer settings, Mad Programmer's Force Hi-resolution tool (see this article on it) puts a ForceHires.cpl file in there etc. The same stands for Spb Pocket Plus, MS Voice Command (please see this article for a full roundup of all voice controller apps) and XCPUScalar.

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