Okay, here's the deal. I'm leaving in a week or so for Iraq. I've bought some nifty toys to take with me. A small, non-gaming laptop, a nice multimedia PDA, and some other misc. things such as a 2 GB thumb drive and a 2 GB SD card.

I opted for the PDA because I can use it for work purposes as well as watch movies and listen to audio files. It runs Windows Pocket PC 2003 Pro. Anyone have any suggestions for must have software for my PDA?

I chose this particular computer for its size and price. I didn't intend to play cutting edge, new games on it. I do however intend to play many of my older games but I would prefer not to lug all the CDs with me. I could burn copies so the originals stay safe but then I lug around the same numer of backup discs. I could install and search for cracks but then my hard drive is packed with software I may or may not want installed. I'm thinking I could burn them on DVDs which would take up less space but if I do that how do I get around the fact that programs usually want a specific CD in the drive?

Any other tips you think would be useful on my upcoming journey would be appreciated!

Alcohol 120% and/or Daemon Tools allows you to mount ISOs of files onto a virtual drive. Look it up if you need to, install the trial version of one or the other. I suggest ripping the ISOs (a rather simple process if you read up on it) and putting them on DVD's, or even your harddrive. You might also consider no-cd cracks which are great tools to use, even legal to use for the purpose you're using them. Of course, the admins will claim illegality and either edit this post or delete it, claiming to not want to be affiliated with warez, but either way just know it IS legal and a viable alternative.

For google...think game, what fire does, and an alternative name for the earth.

I expect an edit of this post to take no less than 30 minutes.

OMG THE WORLD IS BURNING

I was thinking 120% but I wasn't sure if it would work in a 'backing up my CDs to DVD' situation.

The software I use on my Dell Axim x50v (I specify that because I don't know whether this will work just the same on yours, probably depends on what CPU type it has) are:

Innobec Sidewindow - A nifty little program that makes your PDA act as a second monitor when docked (and you can use the standard Windows thing to position it). Excellent little program, I tend to drag download windows or 'Copying progress' or that sort of thing across to it so I can keep an eye on the progress.

Resco File Explorer - Just basically a better file explorer, does pretty much everything windows explorer. Also comes with other crap, FTP explorer, registry explorer, and a today screen. The Resco today screen is nice, it displays your battery status.

TCPMP - (formerly known as Beta Player) - A media player that looks exactly like Media Player Classic. Strictly minimalist approach, none of the bulk of the Windows Media Player. God, I hate that.

RemoteAmp - This displays and controls whatever stuff you're playing in winamp on your PC.

Spb Time - A clock. I use it as a 'screen saver', so it pops up when I haven't used my PDA (docked) for a while.

1-Calc - Calculator. Bigger, better.



Pretty much all the programs I find are 'designed for a previous version of Windows Mobile!'. This is really quite irritating, as they often end up looking really... fuzzy.

Also, get yourself a 1GB CF and/or SD card.

Yeah it would work for that, you could fit a 6-7 700mb ISOs onto a DVD.

I have an Axim x30. love it. Can get a brand new one off ebay for less then 200.

Good tips on the programs. I have Beta Player installed and I looked on 1-Calc. Sidewindow sounds really interesting as my desktop is a two monitor setup. I'm going to check a lot of your suggestions out.



Strange that they tend to be for older versions when the current version is 2003. WTH? Oh well, they seem to work but it still seems strange.



Yeah, that's what my original intention was. I quickly did a google of 120% last night and it now seems to be not free. I thought it used to be. If so, are their some previous versions that are still available for free?