.KEYWORD phatware
.FLYINGHEAD MORE COOL TOOLS FOR STUDENTS
.TITLE PhatWare’s HPC Notes 3.0 Professional and HPC Spell
.OTHER
.SUMMARY If you enjoyed Dan Huber’s series on cool tools for students from Developer One, here’s a special bonus. This time, the focus is on a company called PhatWare as Dan takes a look at two more products that are great for students and non-students alike.
.AUTHOR Dan Huber
In a series of articles concluding this month, I had discussed some of Developer One’s productivity-oriented software titles that come in handy for me as a student. Now, however, I’d like to turn your attention to another popular software manufacturer called PhatWare.
There are two PhatWare programs in particular that I’d like to look at. They are HPC Notes 3.0 Professional and HPC Spell, two great labor saving devices for students and non-students alike.
.H1 HPC Notes 3.0 Professional
Though a plug-in is available for Outlook in order to interface with either Outlook Notes or HPC Notes 3.0 Professional, our focus will be on the latter system because, personally, I feel HPC Notes 3.0 Professional is more useful than Outlook Notes.
.H2 New and improved
HPC Notes 3.0 Professional has really gone through a lot of development, and PhatWare has paid close attention to the needs and requests of its customers. The latest incarnation of this program adds more features and capabilities, but it still retains the previous version’s abilities, such as a familiar interface and functionality. This eases the process of upgrading and essentially eliminates any learning curve.
You can now store notes in multiple databases, and with the already-available categories you have a very flexible way of storing and sorting notes. This is great for sorting and separating notes that relate to specific classes.
.H2 Desktop version
A new feature on the HPC Notes desktop version is a utility called HPC Notes Notifier. This is a great addition that far surpasses Outlook in its ability to alert you to events and tasks. This small program runs in the tray and is represented by a small bell icon. By opening the options on this utility, you’re able to configure exactly when you wish this program to run. I choose to let it run at boot up. You can also configure the way in which it notifies you. It offers you a choice of audible alarms to accompany the optional dialog box. The bell also begins to toggle between green and blue when activated. This is a great feature that has really taken HPC Notes to new heights.
.H2 Hierarchical browsing
Another major enhancement to the usability of HPC Notes for both platforms is the introduction of hierarchical browsing of your notes. You can sort by date, type, priority, and color. A preview pane is available on both platforms for viewing your notes while still leaving your list of notes quickly accessible. The H/PC version is seen in operation in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Though I was skeptical about the clarity of this design, seeing really is believing.
.H2 Synchronization
Synchronization options have been enhanced as well. You can now opt to synchronize only notes of certain color categories or priorities. This is a great way to limit what you carry around on your mobile device if you have large notes databases. This is especially true now that databases are no longer limited to a mere 1000 notes. In fact, you are now limited only by your computer’s memory.
These features I’ve mentioned are just some of the enhancements you’ll find in HPC Notes 3.0 Professional. For more information, visit their Web site at http://www.phatware.com/hpcnotes/hpcnotes3pro.html.
.H2 FYI
PhatWare wanted me to mention that HPC Notes 3.0 Professional can synchronize with multiple notes databases on the desktop version of HPC Notes Professional only. It doesn’t synchronize with Outlook by design. HPC Notes Standard, meanwhile, synchronizes a single notes database with Outlook.
I encourage you to read the release notes to ensure that you’re entirely aware of the capabilities of each version and choose the version that’s appropriate for your needs. It was apparent that some customers had expected HPC Notes 3.0 Professional to synchronize with Outlook and were disappointed when it didn’t.
.H1 HPC Spell
HPC Spell, while similar to Microsoft’s built-in H/PC Pocket Word 2.0 application, is different in a few not-so-subtle ways.
.H2 Customizable spell-check
What gives PhatWare’s HPC Spell the edge over Pocket Word is its ability to better customize the spell-checking engine. You have the ability to disregard such things as Roman numerals and Internet addresses. This is a great feature for students, as creating research papers for classes often involves creating an outline that’s organized with several different chronological devices. As we enter the 21st century, the Internet can only become a more prominent part of our lives. As a student, I’ll begin to reference more and more Internet resources in my documents, and not having to stop and manually bypass addresses is a handy option, indicating that PhatWare is on the leading edge with their technology.
.H2 Statistics function
The statistics function, shown in Figure B, gives you such details as paragraphs, words, etc. This is a boon to students creating essays and other documents that must meet minimum requirements set forth by a teacher.
.FIGPAIR B The statistics feature is a necessity for students.
.H2 Email connection
If this isn’t enough, this last major difference will surely set HPC Spell apart from Pocket Word 2.0. Under the File menu, there’s an option to send the current document to one or more email recipients. A direct link to your Contacts database is provided to make it easy to add addresses to the various address fields. Thus, you can simply create your message in HPC Spell, use the spell-checking engine to correct your errors, quickly add the addresses of your intended recipients, and complete the process. When you next connect to your mail service in Pocket Outlook’s Inbox, your mail will be delivered.
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.H1 A dynamic duo
Finally, don’t forget that when you combine HPC Notes and HPC Spell, you’re able to use HPC Spell to spell-check the notes you created in HPC Notes. This really makes these products inseparable.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on PhatWare’s HPC Notes 3.0 Professional Edition, visit http://www.phatware.com/hpcnotes/hpcnotes3pro.html.
For more information on PhatWare’s documentation for HPC Notes Lite and Standard, visit http://www.phatware.com/hpcnotes/hpcnotes_doc.html.
For more information on HPC Spell, visit http://www.phatware.com/hpcspell.html.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
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