Introduction
   With the introduction of the Palm-sized PC,  Microsoft carried the Windows interface another step "forward" from the H/PC to the palmtop.  But the limited screen real estate makes the interface, at times,  awkward and cumbersome.   Although Microsoft gave us the "Start" menu,  other basic Windows' elements completely left out.  Missing was the ever-present Explorer which allowed users access to their files on their hard drives and also missing was the ability to switch between running tasks.  MS's reasoning for these omissions is that we shouldn't even know about "files system" on the the mobile device and  shouldn't even care about the concept of "tasks" on such a small consumer oriented-device. In the past year,  this reasoning is being questioned almost at every turn.

    StarTap from Thumbs Up Software is a new PPC utility that addresses these missing features and then some.  In particular,  StarTap is File Manager - it will let you view the very files Microsoft told us we didn't care about.  It is a Task Switcher - it will show you all the currently running tasks and allow you to switch between them.  It  is also an Application Launcher - it will allow you to set up folders with short-cuts to your favorite applications and documents.  To make things even more interesting, Thumbs Up has tossed in a few addition utilities as well, making it one of the most useful pieces of software I've found anywhere.

Setup
   Installation is a two-step process. First, you run the install from the desktop.  This copies the StarTap program installation files onto your PPC.   Once the desktop stage is complete,  the PPC-hosted install kicks off and you'll need to switch to the device to continue the installation.   The Setup process completed without a hitch.  It installs two items in the start-program menu,  the "StarTap" and  "StarTask" menu items.    The "StarTap" menu starts up the StarTap Desktop and the "StarTask" menu item,  loads the StarTask task manager into icon tray for easy access.

Program Features

StarTap Desktop
    The StarTap Desktop is the Application Launcher.  StarTap starts out with a few default icons on its desktop.  These icons can either be folders or short cuts to applications or documents.  Clicking on a folder will display the contents of the folder.  Starting from the upper-left of the desktop: The Tasks icon opens a folder containing all the currently running application in an icon.  Clicking on an application icon will switch you to that application.  The Toolbar icon allows you to hide and show the menu/toolbar at the top of the screen.  The Explorer icon runs the StarTap Explorer application.  The Control Panel icon will show you the same configuration icons that are available in the Start->Control Panel menu item.  The Recycle bin icon saves all your deleted buttons just in case you need to restore.  The next two icons My Stuff and Moby Dick,  are user-defined icons.  My Stuff is a folder containing my short-cuts my most-used applications documents and the Moby Dick icon is a short-cut to my eBook of Moby Dick.  This is where StarTap Desktop can be really  useful.  You can create any number of nested folders to store short cuts to application or documents. 

StarTask Menu
   The Task menu allows you to switch between currently running tasks, close any existing task and quickly bring up the StarTap desktop.  You can access the task menu through the task bar icon in the icon tray at the bottom of the screen.   The snapshot above shows the task menu in the low right portion of the screen.   Both single and double click actions can both be defined by the user(see the configuration section below).  I've set the single-click to display the task menu and the double-click to bring up the StarTap desktop.  The task menu isn't really a menu.  It more a cross between a menu and a dialog box.  The first to lines displays the current battery usage (and who hasn't needed this information?).  The second line displays the systems current memory usage.  Both very useful utilities by themselves.

The next few lines show a list of the current running applications.  Along the bottom of the menu/window is a row of buttons.  The first two buttons control what happens when you click on a task.  With the exclamation button(!) down or press, clicking on the task switches you to that task.  With the "X" depressed, clicking on a task closes that task.  The next "star" icon quickly switches you to the StarTap desktop. The "eye" icon allows you take a snapshot of the current screen and the last "X" closes the task menu/window.

StarTap Explorer

StarTap includes a full function explorer for the palm PC.  Where other PPC explorer applications give you just that singe functionality, StarTap includes it as part of a whole package.

The StarTap Explorer supports all the basic functions like cut/copy/paste of files to anywhere on the your device including the compact flash storage.

The StarTap Explorer can be configured several ways:  1) Tree on the Top/Files below, 2) Files on Top/Tree below, 3) Tree on the left/files on the right, and 4) files on the right/Tree on the left. 

Another useful feature of this product is its SysInfo view.  It will dig into your PPC and pull out all sorts of good information including miscellaneous System, Processor, Memory, StarTap, and even Battery information.

Configuration
StarTaps' features can be controlled using its' Preferences dialog.  It allow you to configure how the TaskMenu tray icon responds to single and double-clicks and whether or not the TaskMenus displays the memory and battery gauges. Also configurable is to whether StarTap is automatically started up whenever the devices is re-booted.  Another configuration option is the StarTap Desktop settings.  These settings allow you to control how tightly the icons on the desktop are displayed, change the background wallpaper image,  and whether the "Capture" icon is displayed in the task menu.  The Hibernate option allow StarTap to be unloaded from memory whenever another application is launched or switch to rather than sitting in the background.  This help conserve memory albeit a bit slow when unloading StarTap.  The StarTask taskbar icon will still remain for quick access.  For those with 4MB PPCs,  it should be quite useful.

Bugs/ Changes for next version
   One of the things that annoyed me most was the slight change in the way you modify or change the StarTap desktop icons.  For instance, if you want to delete a button on the desktop, you first select the menu option "File-Delete", then you select the button you wish to delete. This is opposite from the desktop and almost every other app desktop/PPC that I know of.  Normally, you first select the object and then select the action you wish to perform.  To make it even more confusion, the when you select the "File-Delete" operation, there is no indicator that tells you your in the "delete" mode.  If I select another menu option it cancels that mode.  But if I happen to select "delete" and then got distracted with a phone call.  You could easily return to your PPC and click on another button,  thereby deleting it from the desktop.  It is a minor annoyance, since the recycle bin(shown in the desktop screenshot above) allows recovery of deleted buttons.  But still it's an uncomfortable one.  A small degree of re-training is required to get used to this reversal.  To their credit,  they opted for making the desktop buttons single click to improve its usability, but at the cost of a somewhat awkward maintenance procedure.

    Another annoyance is the use of the "X" image in its interface with two different meanings (see the task menu screenshot above).  From looking at it,   I couldn't tell that the first two task menu buttons were a toggling like two radio button options and since the "X"s were displayed twice, I wasn't sure which did what.  A definite confusion.   If you look close enough,   you'll notice that the two "X" images are not exactly alike, the toggling "X" was slightly stylized and the the "X" on the left was the standard "X" button seen on window caption bars.   But still,  they were similar enough to confuse me more than once. 

Overall Impression
   I must say that the StarTap group is a busy one.  In the course of this review,   they had released over seven updates.  All of which worked perfectly fine and contained really useful and valuable features.  The Memory and Battery gauge in the StarTask menu is just one example.  It is clear that Thumbs Up Software took a close look at several of the most popular utility applications and are trying to beat them at their own game.  And I think they have succeeded.  They have done an excellent job of matching or exceeding the other utilities and have packaged them into an easy to use product.  In fact, since it only costs $10,  it is by far the best value in software around. I highly recommended StarTap.