• Flight Scheduler: This program inserts flight information into your Calendar.

• Business Cards: With Business Cards, you can exchange electronic business cards using your Handheld PC's infrared port. You can also exchange your personal or corporate logo with your business card. [For some reason, most PDA manufacturers seem to think this feature is the bees knees. Face it guys, there are only a few places where we'll see people beaming business cards and they all yell "Geek" or "desperate marketing ploy" at the tops of their lungs. - DG]

• Quick Start Menu: This program gives you instant access to files and folders that you frequently use by adding a Quick Start menu icon to the taskbar. This is very similar to a feature in the bUSEFUL utilities pack.

• PIM Transfer: With this program, you can transfer PIM data to another Handheld PC using the Calendar and Tasks programs.

• File Associate: The File Associate program is integrated into Windows Explorer. By associating a file type with a program, you can open all files of that type in the program that created them by double-clicking them in Windows Explorer. This would seem to be a necessary feature of the basic OS and makes this a must-have download.

• Sounds: Several sound schemes are available: Analog, Metallic, Organic, and Sci-Fi.

• Ping: A utility used to verify connections to one or more remote networked hosts.

• Handheld PC's IP address: This, along with Ping, can be useful for network troubleshooting. Run this utility to determine the Handheld PC's IP address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway, if the Handheld PC is set to obtain an IP address via DHCP.

• Hostname Lookup: Looks up a hostname, also useful for troubleshooting.

• Pocket PowerPoint Templates: Use these templates in Microsoft PowerPoint 97 (or 2000) to create presentations that can be viewed on your Handheld PC with Microsoft Pocket PowerPoint.

• Plus! Background Image: A background image for your Handheld PC's desktop.

• Favorites: Synchronize Internet Explorer Favorites between the desktop computer and the Handheld PC. Favorites sync automatically when you connect your device to your desktop.

Product availability and resources Microsoft Plus Pack is available from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsce/products/download/plus.asp. Microsoft Powertoys is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsce/products/download/powtoy30.asp.

Jason Perlow is Senior Technical Editor with Windows CE Power. When he's not scouring the Web for great Windows CE utilities and programs, he can be reached at perlow@hotmail.com.