PowerToys revisited

Mostly because of TabletPCPost, I downloaded several of the Microsoft Tablet PC PowerToys–some of which I had’t tried in a long while.

I ran across a couple things that caught my attention:

I couldn’t get the New York Times crossword puzzle program to download a puzzle. I keep geting an error message that suggests that I check my Internet connection or clock. Anyone else running into this?

And the extremely attractive pool program crashed numerous times until I finally realized I had to exit just about everything I was running as well as run the program in primary landscape mode. The Pool program is probably the slickest looking PowerToy. Compare it to the latest Dots PowerToy, for instance. Looks like it needs a little tweaking to make it more portrait and memory friendly though.

And what about my favs?

My favorite-tech PowerToy is hands down the Snipping tool–professionally done and easy to use. It comes in handy for grabbing screenshots, although I wish it could publish to my MovableType blog. (This just goes to show you how standards change. I never would have considered this an issue before. But for community-focused PowerToys, blogs are important to support.)

The Dictionary Tool (written by Shanine Omar) is also at the top of my “most-often-used” PowerToy–even though I rarely think about it. It’s a great transparent program. It simply makes my handwriting recognition work better–especially with all my awkward program names. Great job Omar.