.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Pocket Tunes: tunes, Internet radio, and more on your Treo
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
.SUMMARY Heather Wardell takes her Treo everywhere she goes, and she often wants to listen to music in coffee shops or in her car. The Treo came with a free copy of Pocket Tunes version 3 by NormSoft, which was quite functional, but Pocket Tunes Deluxe version 4 and its Internet radio and online music store access is a giant step forward. To learn all about it, you’ll want to read this review. How was support? Does Internet radio work over a Treo? The only way you’ll find out is to read Heather’s article.
.OTHER
I take my Treo everywhere I go, and I often want to listen to music in coffee shops or in my car. The Treo came with a free copy of Pocket Tunes version 3 by NormSoft, which was quite functional, but Pocket Tunes Deluxe version 4 and its Internet radio and online music store access is a giant step forward.
The installer offers Pocket Tunes itself and an application to allow the program to integrate with Windows Media Player, as well as a skin to change the look of the player and plugins to allow you to play music in Ogg Vorbis and WAV formats. By default, the application can play AAC and aacPlus, WMA, and MP3 formats.
The NormSoft Web site has a large variety of other skins available and you can create your own if none of those are perfect for you. Figure A shows the "sleek (blue)" skin, my favorite for its simplicity and ease of use.
.FIGPAIR A PocketTunes, with the "sleek (blue)" skin installed, is a clean and easy to use application.
When run, the application automatically checks your Palm’s memory and memory card to locate any music you might already have installed. As well, if the Palm is connected to the computer when you start PocketTunes, the software starts up the Windows Media Player if you’ve installed the integration feature.
.H1 Using Pocket Tunes
I use iTunes instead of Windows Media Player because I use an iPod, but I had Windows Media import my library so I could test the connection between Pocket Tunes and Windows Media. At first I was unsuccessful: the transfer would start and then freeze, requiring me to reset my Treo each time.
I contacted NormSoft’s tech support (without identifying myself as a reviewer) and had a response within hours explaining a number of possible problems and suggesting I first try a different SD card. Sure enough, a new card worked perfectly. I was impressed with their response: quick, detailed, and accurate.
To transfer music, you start Pocket Tunes with your Palm connected to the synchronization cable or cradle. Windows Media Player starts automatically and shows how much space you have available on your memory card. You can transfer to the Palm’s internal memory as well, but I could only do this when the SD card was removed from my Treo.
Transferring one CD’s worth of songs took approximately two minutes, considerably faster than HotSyncing the same files but not as fast as a direct copy to the memory card. I did notice, after the synchronization was complete, that the desktop said I could disconnect the Palm — but the Palm didn’t say it could be disconnected for a good fifteen seconds afterward.
Once music is on your handheld, you can create custom playlists, or just choose a particular album or artist and play the songs that go along with it. I found the menus easy to navigate and clear, and while I started out creating playlists for each album, it’s so quick to just go through the "open" menu and find songs that I stopped. It’s worth doing if you have songs by a variety of artists and want to quickly select the same group over and over.
.H1 Sound quality
The sound quality is surprisingly good. My Treo came with a single-earpiece headset, and I’ve also bought an adapter to allow me to use standard headphones. Playing without headphones, it’s quite obvious the Treo’s playing out of a single speaker, but the quality is more than good enough for background music. My car doesn’t have an MP3 jack, so I often use my Treo in the car, letting it play without headphones. The volume and sound quality are good enough that I don’t need to have the Treo at full volume. In fact, I find it too loud at full volume.
Pocket Tunes offers a volume boost feature, but I found it caused distortion at all levels, and I didn’t need it anyhow. If I’m using a two-ear headset, I usually have the volume somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five percent; with the one-ear headset, or a louder external environment, I’ll go up to seventy percent or so.
Full volume is too loud to talk over when playing without headphones and I’m sure it wouldn’t do my hearing any favors with headphones. The Treo is sitting beside me as I write this, speaker side up, with the volume at forty-one percent, and it’s a perfect level for background music.
.H1 Managing phone calls
When you make a call, or a call comes in, Pocket Tunes pauses its playback until the call is complete. As well, Pocket Tunes recognizes when I’m recording a new voice memo and stops playing until the memo is recorded, starting again when I’m finished. I have been using this software now for several months and have never had it play at the wrong time, or start playing again after I’ve stopped it.
Pocket Tunes has a background play feature, so you can use other applications while the music plays (something explicitly not allowed in the iPhone, for those keeping track). I find the playback only skips when moving from one application to another when I open a particularly large eBook, and even then only for a split second. Pocket Tunes even continues to play during a HotSync operation, with an occasional small stutter, and plays behind an alarm sound as well.
You have the option to have a small console pop up when you press a button to allow you to control Pocket Tunes from other applications. Figure B shows this console over top of Documents to Go and the novel I’m working on at the moment. Being able to quickly skip or repeat a song without leaving the current application is handy.
.FIGPAIR B It’s easy to control Pocket Tunes from other applications via the console.
.H1 Internet radio
Pocket Tunes version 4 allows access to Internet radio stations. Hundreds of stations are available by default, but you can also add your favorites. In my tests it seemed to take about five to ten seconds for a station to begin playing, but once it started I found the playback to be reasonably solid. There were occasional pauses to rebuffer, and playback was also disrupted when I also attempted to access my Gmail account through the Web browser. Reading eBooks or accessing other applications didn’t affect the playback.
With my Treo’s screen turned off most of the time, my battery level dropped about seven percent in fifteen minutes of Internet radio playback. My Treo’s battery life has always been an issue, so this doesn’t seem particularly high for this specific unit, but it is something to keep an eye on if you won’t have easy access to a charger. Do note that Internet radio takes quite a bit of bandwidth; I wouldn’t suggest using it without an unlimited Internet access plan on your Palm.
Pocket Tunes is also able to connect to various online music stores, such as Real Rhapsody and Napster. Real Rhapsody is not available in Canada so I couldn’t test it, but Napster’s Canadian version worked perfectly with Pocket Tunes, and in fact according to the Napster site, works only with Pocket Tunes for Palm devices.
A high recommendation, and deserved. For its solid design and powerful features, Pocket Tunes earns a solid 4 out 5.
.RATING 4
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
Learn more about [[http://www.pocket-tunes.com|Pocket Tunes]].
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.BIO
