by boysbytes, 6 November 2004.

I do spring cleaning on my desktop once a year (or when Windows decide to give me grief). But every other month, I'd run basic system maintenance like defragmenting my drive and cleaning out lost application shortcuts. Some may not know, but the Pocket PC could also use some system maintenance once in a while to keep things running smoothly. One popular solution is MemMaid by DinarSoft.

What's the fuss?

From my experience, everytime I uninstall an application, not everything is removed. There would be leftover registry entries and orphaned shortcuts. If you browse the Internet, and you'll have cookies and cached files stored in your PDA. Slowly, these files will increase and take up precious memory, and this will lead to instability when you use your Pocket PC. You could manually delete these files, but a better way would be to install an application that automates the cleaning process. MemMaid is a safe way to clean junk from your Pocket PC, but it also includes some other system maintenance features that makes sure your Pocket PC is performing at its best.

Wash, Rinse and Spin

When you first launch MemMaid you will find yourself at the Quick Cleaner tab. This is where you can allow MemMaid to automatcially scan your device and clean up any junk files from the OS. The Quick Cleaner will present you the amount of junk files in your system. For greater control over what files to delete, you can select the Advanced Cleaner where you can choose which files to delete or to keep.



Quick Cleaner automates scanning and deleting junk files.




Advanced Cleaner gives you more control over what files you want deleted.

The next tab is the Notification Queue. This is a database of events that are schedule to run (eg. alarms, reminders) and applications that have to run at an event (eg. USB connection, flash memory insertion). However, some events get multiple entries and this can slow down your device. MemMaid can find these duplicate entries and delete them.



It's safe to delete duplicate entries.

The third tab shows the Start Up Programs, Start Up Services and Today Plugins. I'd rather not mess with any of these unless you know what you're removing.



You can see all the files that are launched when you reset your device. Pretty cryptic file names...




Toggle through the different views.




You can enable/disable the today plugins and change their order.

Next is Memory Tweaks where you get to change the location of the AvantGo cache folder (does anyone still use AvantGo?), IE's cache folder, IE's cache size and the Font cache size. Increasing the Font cache size is said to improve the display speed. I haven't seen any perceptible improvements, but I usually set the Font cache size to its maximum on my device.



The Memory Tweaks tab.

If you really got to know where all your storage memory goes to, then the next tab would be for you. Storage Usage displays a directory tree of your whole system so you can see how much data is in each folder. Also in this tab is a File Finder for you to look for files based on file extension, file name and file size.



A directory tree view of all your folders and how much space they take up.

Finally, you can see how much each application takes up while running in the Running Processes tab. This is actually pretty interesting, especially to see if the application is a memory hog. I was pleased to find out that MemMaid takes up roughly 120kb of memory.



More cryptic file names of applications running in the background.

Other nice touches are the ability to soft reset and power off your device from MemMaid. I actually use a freeware alternative that I place on my Today Screen, but it's a useful feature in MemMaid. Make sure you check Show this message again at the Soft Reset prompt. MemMaid will only remember this until the next soft reset. If you forget to recheck the prompt, MemMaid will not prompt you on the next soft reset.



I prefer setting MemMaid to prompt me before performing the soft reset.

Conclusion

I used to regularly delete junk files from my device manually. And since I do software reviews, I also manually remove dead registry entries and orphaned shortcuts. It's not tedious, but after this review, MemMaid will be one of the "must have" applications in my device. Cleaning junk files is just 2 taps away, and so far I haven't had any issues. However I do regular backups so I'm not afraid of losing my data. I'd suggest you do the same.


I'd like to mention that MemMaid comes with a very good help file. Anytime you're unsure about a function, just tap the help icon. The help file does a pretty good job at explaining what each function does.

Pros

• Very easy to clean up junk files. I was surprised by how much junk files were in my device!
• I haven't had any issues after cleaning, but I'd suggest you do regular backups.
• Takes up very little space and memory.

Cons

• Some of the features are just informative. Then again, is that something bad?
• MemMaid doesn't "remember" to prompt you before a soft reset.

Coffee Cups



Product Details


Developer: DinarSoft


Price:RM37.96


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