Expert: Tim Hillebrand

I tend to think of Proporta.com as the case place because they seem to be able to cover just about any digital device out there. The new line of Universal Phone Cases comes in three sizes:

Internal dimensions

Small Case: 90mm x 25mm x 50mm
Medium Case: 110mm x 60mm x 25mm
Large Case: 120mm x 70mm x 30mm

These black leather, handsome cases will protect your device with a stitched-in aluminum insert in the flap cover with a strong magnetic clasp. The sides and bottom are composed of expandable elastic to accommodate slightly larger sizes.

The cost is $27.95 and shipping is free for the rest of the month.

I wish that the cover had a couple of pockets for expansion cards. I wish that the strong and secure belt clip on the back were removable so I could stow it in my gadget bag better. Other than these minor nags, it is a good investment in the security of your device.

Vito Technology listens. It’s always gratifying to see a company that is as responsive as Vito. In a matter of months, Vito has managed to issue several new releases of their innovative SMS-Chat client making significant improvements each time.

I have previously reviewed the program in depth, so I’m not going to go into detail here other than to cover some of the significant innovations. Suffice it to say that SMS-Chat is an attractive, finger-friendly, easy to use SMS client for touch screen WM devices that will thread your messages and organize them by contact, time and date. It is also capable of sending a message to multiple recipients.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about older versions was that an incoming text message would pop up on your screen. This unfortunate feature represented serious security issues and potentially embarrassing situations. In the new version, you can turn off this feature. Hooray! Mission accomplished.

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I've been a mentor in the local schools for eight years. There have been some happy times and some sad times, but what happened yesterday was the most devastating. When I arrived, my mentee was eager to tell me what had happened to him at the library. He goes there almost every day after school to play an online game with his pals. He has been working on his prized character for about two years for two to four hours a day. That's a lot of work. I can't help wondering what else could have been accomplished with that amount of energy, but nevermind.

This twelve-year old boy was practically in tears as he sputtered what had transpired. It involved grand theft and ransom. It seems that some Junior High school larcenists had purloined his prized game avatar and stolen all its attributes that had taken two years to acquire. How would you feel if someone absconded with something you had so laboriously created? It's akin to child theft.

As he was was finishing his tale of woe, his buddy walked into my office, which is really a closet, and unleashed his even sadder story. It seems that not only had his character been stolen but horror of horrors, turned into a female. To make matters worse, all of the avatar's hard-earned attributes had been stripped away in a cruel act of malicious mischief.

But, it turns out that is was more than just malicious mischief. The Junior High library larcenists had given these grammar school guys 24 hours to fork over 25 bucks if they wanted their avatars back intact, and time was running out.

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Unavoidably, Windows Mobile devices can get bogged down with open programs running in the background, installation files, duplicate contacts, Internet history, invalid registry entries, broken links, temporary and cache files, duplicate files, old email and attachments. These things and more can begin to pile up and affect the performance of your machine.

First things first: scrub the system

You need a practical method of purging the system with a thorough housekeeping regimen. This can be a tedious task, some of which you can do yourself, but it’s better to have an application dedicated to this purpose. I believe I’ve tried all of the system scrubbers out there and by process of elimination discovered the best. This one so far outshines the others that there is virtually no competition, no contest whatsoever. It’s a nifty little Swiss Army knife for system tweak, repair, and maintenance that is not just a tool kit but a whole repair shop . It’s called SKTools and is available at http://www.handango.com for $14.99. Trust me. This is the single most important investment you can make in your little pocket pal.

There really isn’t room in this article to review fully all the features of this incredible application, but let me list a few so you will get the idea. It will clean old files, duplicates, bad registry keys, optimize and tune up settings to improve performance, purge temporary and cache folders, delete junk files, eliminate bad shortcuts, manage storage cards, and free up RAM. It will also let you view and manage running processes and check out CPU usage and services. It can run benchmark performance tests and optimize the registry.

One of the useful functions I appreciate is in the PIM arena where my system gets messed up with duplicate appointments, contacts, and tasks from syncing multiple machines. I don’t know what I’d do without SKTools’ ability to purge duplicates that just keep growing. Sometimes I have had as many as a dozen dupes. You can even get it to wipe out the whole PIM database if you want to start fresh.

Your first spring cleaning task is to get a copy of SKTools and run it often.

Next thing to do

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Perhaps you are new to the world of text messaging or you haven’t bothered to look beyond the native functionality your phone provides. You may be surprised at some of the enhancements available to make texting even more productive, secure, enjoyable, and even profitable.

One of the many things I appreciate about my Treo 750 is its ability to thread SMS chats into conversations by contact. On most machines, the built-in Windows Mobile SMS utility simply lists messages in the order received, which rapidly becomes a jumble.

Several third-party applications make threading possible and handle it in elegant ways.

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