Pocket Plus is among the most popular of all the Today screen plug-ins for the Pocket PC. Besides being a very capable task manager and fixing a few problems with Windows Mobile, the most popular aspect of Pocket Plus is the tabbed Today plug-in. This permits a variety of status indicators, program and other shortcuts to be made immediately available on the Today screen.

Even with the likes of Pocket Plus, however, the amount of space available on the Today screen continues to be at a premium with numerous plug-ins competing with each other to be seen. To this end those clever people at Spb Software House have modified and enhanced Pocket Plus and their other Today screen products (Spb Finance and GPRS Monitor) so that Pocket Plus can now act as a container for those Spb plug-ins.

After installing version 2.5 and the other updated products, tap and hold on the tabs to display the New Tab..., Rename Tab..., Delete Tab popup menu. Selecting New Tab displays a sub-menu containing an Items entry and one entry for each available Spb plug-in - those already installed are greyed out and unavailable.

• Selecting the Items entry displays the usual screen for maintaining icons and status indicators.
• Selecting a plug-in name causes a new tab to be created with the plug-in name as its title. While the plug-in occupies the top position of any tab, it is still possible to add the usual other icons and indicators beneath; it is not possible to display more than one plug-in per tab. Any normal Options icon of a plug-in is not displayed, with the plug-in configuration screens available either through the Pocket Plus option screen or any popup menu config. option that the plug-in might offer.

The Pocket Plus Today plug-in options screen is accessed as before and has changed only slightly. A Plugin Options button has been added and becomes enabled only when a plug-in entry is highlighted in the tabs list - selecting this button displays the config. screen for the appropriate plug-in. I have always been a fan of Spb's software, Pocket Plus in particular, and these new improvements only help to reinforce my opinion.

Spb have recognised how important users consider their Today screen real estate to be and have responded by making the logical improvement to their already great products. While it would be nice if it were possible to have more than one plug-in per tab and to be able to alter their position within the tab, these are very minor issues. Now all we have to wait for is Spb to be able to dock anyone's plug-in into Pocket Plus - now that would be nice!

I give Pocket Plus 2.5 its typically perfect 10/10.