The shortcut in the Start menu's Communications folder minimizes the time needed for your device to refresh the screen because the less shortcuts, the faster the refresh. The installation also places a shortcut to DialupMaster in the Startup folder so that DialupMaster is always ready to monitor your connections and provide you with fast access to your connections from the beginning.

As you can see in Figure B, once DialupMaster has been launched, an icon representative of DialupMaster is visible in the system tray and this is where all actions take place.

FIGURE B

DialupMaster is represented by the icon of a telephone sitting atop a modem.

This gives you instant access to all of the capabilities of DialupMaster from any application and is more sensible than some window-based utility.

Simple interface
Since this program resides in the tray, it's not going to be loaded with all sorts of drop-down menus or windows, but this makes sense for such a focused utility. Now I will introduce you to the main portion of DialupMaster.

When you look at Figure C, the resulting pop-up menu that represents DialupMaster will at the very least have four selections for you to make.

FIGURE C

DialupMaster doesn't appear to have much, but looks can be deceiving. Click picture for a larger image.

The first selection, Close DialupMaster, is obvious in its purpose. By selecting this choice, DialupMaster will first prompt you with a choice of "Yes" or "No" to make sure that you want to close DialupMaster, which will also disable any use of the scripts that it can run (more on this later).

The second choice, Help, is a pop-up menu that contains links to specific help topics, or you can launch the main Help file if you desire (by selecting Contents) as illustrated in Figure D. This is a nice feature when you are trying to target a specific section of the program.

FIGURE D

Specific help file choices ease the process of getting started. Click picture for a larger image.

This is also the place where you can locate DialupMaster's version information under About, as you can see in Figure E, and you'll even find the Internet address at which Peter's site is located.

FIGURE E

You don't have to remember where Peter's site is located; the address is included. Click picture for a larger image.

The third choice is Options. DialupMaster has numerous options. In fact, there are so many different customization options, I'm writing a separate article on getting the most out of DialupMaster, which will probably run next month.

The fourth choice is labeled "Remote Networking" and by selecting this choice from the pop-up menu, DialupMaster will open your Windows CE-based device's Remote Networking folder, giving you fast access to all of your dial-up connections. This feature can come in handy when you need to edit the properties of an existing connection to resolve a conflict, change the dial-up access phone number, etc.

If you have any existing dial-up connections that are stored in Remote Networking, or any system connections (these use the serial and infrared ports of your device), DialupMaster will display these in the pop-up menu, above Remote Networking. There is some hidden functionality in the connections list that appears above Remote Networking, however, and this is one of DialupMaster's primary features. To find out more about this feature, you'll have to read my follow-up article next month.