Review of Resco Media Suite

By M@rtyn

I was looking at some cool skins the other day and stumbled across some wonderful meters for Resco Explorer. I don´t have this software, so I took a look at the Resco website. There, they have lots of great looking software, so out of curiousity I downloaded the Media Suite v5.45 (now up-dated to v6.01) to play with.

First of all, I was suprised how long it took to load it onto my PDA, but then it dawned on me that there was a lot to load. In the Media Suite you get:

• Resco Explorer 2007
• Photo Viewer
• Audio Recorder
• Pocket Radio

Read more after the jump!

OK. so now I have all of that on my PDA, now what? Well for one thing, it fits nicely inside its own Pocket Breeze tab, which I find very handy as it doesn´t mess up the overall look of my PDA (which took me ages to get just right!).

And what can it do? Well, I am still tinkering with it but I am finding it harder and harder to put down. The core of the Suite is the new Explorer 2007. In the words of Resco:

“it is a powerful file management utility for your Pocket PC. It implements all standard features such as file/folder manipulation. Thus, you can copy, move or delete files, create folders, run programs with arguments, and search for files or folders.”

 Resco Explorer 2007 is complex solution of the next modules:

• The File Manager
• Recycle Bin
• ZIP Compression
• Strong File Encryption
• Build-in viewer
• Network Browser
• Registry Editor
• FTP client

From my point of view, it looks and feels like Windows Explorer, which I feel comfortable with. And has a lot more functionality than the built-in file explorer in WM5. Oh, and I love the recycle bin. Dump a file there and you can still retrieve it later if you change your mind (which I do a lot!)

Then there is Photo Viewer. Up to now I have been using XnView (because its free!), but once again, I am finding more and more that I am using the Resco viewer. It is quicker and just as easy to use. Once more, a few words from the producers:

“Turn your Pocket PC into a Digital Photo Album. Resco Picture Viewer has ability to quickly display images of file formats: RAB, BMP, 2BP, JPG, JPE, JPEG, GIF, PCX, PCD, TIF, TIFF.
Action button, or stylus manipulation, zoom, rotation, slide show and many other fantastic features make this product #1 in its field.”

I collect funny pictures from the Net and also save my own pics on my PDA and find that Photo Viewer is an adeal way to transport them and to display to friends and family. And as a business tool….. Just imagine: you pull the PocketPC out of the pocket of your jacket, connect it to a video projector using a VGA card and launch your PowerPoint presentation. Your boss or business partner will be delighted. Now that is cool!

Pocket Radio. This just made my eyes pop out! Yep, another internet radio, but I´ve never tried it on my PDA, so I find this really cool. Lying in bed listening to some far distant radio station in America (I´m in Germany) via Wi-Fi
And it looks pretty good too. According to Resco, its fully skinnable. And it comes with dozens of pre-set channels, a mix of just about everything. I tend towards the 80´s music channels! It also allows recording of streaming radio, should you want to save a favourite song. Beats the heck out of the old days when we sat in front of the radio with a tape recorder (if you can remember that far back!).

A further feature of the Resco Media Suite is the Audio Recorder. Now to be perfectly honest, this is a feature that I could do without and as yet have not put to the test. So I shall let Resco say a few words here (blowing your own trumpet is allowed!):
Resco Audio Recorder is:

• Complete audio recorder and player, with support for WAV, MP3, OGG Vorbis, Speex, RAF formats and M3U playlists
• Armed with voice activated system (VAS) for gapless recording, spares memory space and with gain control, which makes recorded sound as loud as you need
• Powerful editor with ability to cut, combine and export
• Optimized just for your device for longer battery life and for recording formats with higher quality
• Scheduler allows you to make automatic recording tasks
• Desktop part can change format of your recordings and transfer files to Pocket PC

So, whats the result? A well put together package of great utilities. Resco have done a wonderful job and the softwear runs very smoothly. I am not a computer wizard, so when something works well first time and continues to work well, then I am very happy. In addition to the main utilities mentioned above, the “Today” screen has meters for battery, main memory, CF and SD cards. There are also an array of shortcut icons which lead to the main utilities and also directly to the Registry Editor and a nifty little screen capture funtion.

Would I buy it? Well the complete package costs $45.95, which isn´t too expensive, especially when you take into account that if you bought each utility individually the price tag would be $94.80. OK, I could live without the voice recorder but then you´d still have to lash out $78.85. So buying as a bundle makes more sense (or…. more cents …… left over for you! LOL!). As for buying it, I find that the longer the trial sits on my PDA the more I use it and the less I can do without it, so YES, I will be buying it! Want to try it out too? Well just go to SolSie store and download the trial version, which is fully functional for 14 days.

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