PowerOne
Reviewed by Ken Hopkins
If you find the calculator application that comes as part of the Palm OS to be too anemic, you should try the PowerOne Personal calculator. It is much more attractive than the standard calculator.
In addition to the standard calculator functions, there are some special business, math, and general functions. The business functions are sales tax, markup/discount, and percent change. The math functions are %x, 1/x, power, x2, and square root. The general functions are a tip calculator, calculation log, calendar calculator (to determine the number of days between two events), and help. The additional pages that some of these functions provide are not colorful but they can be useful.
Infinity Softworks offers the PowerOne Personal for free to get you used to their products in the hope you will buy one of their other calculators. Be sure to check out their other offerings.
PowerOne takes a lot of space for its functionality. It requires 74K of memory. Remember that you can not eliminate the standard calculator to get that space back. It is part of the OS.
PowerOne Personal [Free]
PalmOS
Infinity Softworks
info@infinitysw.com.
Tipsy
Reviewed by Ken Hopkins
Tipsy is an application that helps you calculate what the appropriate split of a dinner bill should be (including tip). This can save you for paying part of someone else’s splurge.
Before you do anything else, you should add some standard tip rates like 10%, 15%, and 20%. You should add standard tax rates like 7.25%. These are accessed through menu commands.
You simply enter the amount for each item ordered by each person. Add new people as necessary. The names are kept in a diner database so you can use them again.
Then select the tip percentage and the tax percentage. The correct amounts are then calculated for each person and for the total due.
Of course you will need to make change for all of the members in the party or round them appropriately. These days everyone has a $20 bill. If you want to save money by paying just what you owe, you should probably be able to pay your bill exactly.
Just remember that it is bad form to split the bill when you are on a business dinner. You should not make a guest pay.
Tipsy [Free]
PalmOS
J Robert Ray
jrray@home.com
R_Mines
Reviewed by Ken Hopkins
R_Mines is the Palm OS equivalent of WinMine, the game included in Windows. The object of the game is to detect all of the mines that are randomly scattered around a minefield grid. Of course, it should be done as quickly as possible.
You go through and flag all of the locations where you think there is a bomb. To flag a square, you tap once on the button. Removing is a little tougher: you have to drag it off the screen. If you tap on a flag, a second time it will either blow up (and you lose) or it is a free space. Some of the free spaces will be blank and others will contain numbers. The number shows the number of mines that connect to that square.
The game option "safe corners" sets up a game where all of the corners do not have mines, so you can get started quickly. The "flag all to win" option lets you decide whether it is necessary to flag only the bombs, or to probe all the spaces. You can also set the minefield size and game difficulty (mine density).
This game can keep you busy for a long time.
R_Mines [Free]
PalmOS
Mark Beckman
mbeckman@jps.net
SolFree
Reviewed by Ken Hopkins
SolFree is a free solitaire game, or rather three free solitaire games. It features Klondike, Demon, and Baker’s Game. In my opinion, the biggest advantage of this game over its many competitors is the use of color. That makes it very easy to use.
Klondike plays like the Windows Solitaire game we all know and love. Demon and Baker’s Game are much more difficult.
Moves are made either by dragging a card to the desired location, or by clicking on the source card and then the destination location.
There are options to automatically move a card to the foundation and to flip over a new card as needed. You can turn off the title bar, toolbar, animation, and cheat warning. You can also reverse the layout in case you like things in a particular order. Another option lets you choose if a stack of cards should be squeezed together, or the list should be scrolled. An option you do not see very often is a setting that lets you decide how many moves you can undo. The last option lets you change the card back.
With this application, you will be able to waste time while you are away from your desk as well as when you are at your desk. SmallWare offers two versions of their solitaire program that provide a total of 24 games.
SolFree [Free]
PalmOS
SmallWare
Support@smallware.com
