SwitchOn, the power-on information display program, has reached its final freeware incarnation, version 1.96. Since several improvements have been made to the program since I reviewed version 1.91, I've come back to SwitchOn to find out how it's changed. If you haven't read my original review, it might be a good idea to read it now if you are not familiar with SwitchOn.

The two major changes to SwitchOn since version 1.91 are the task buttons and the ability to map SwitchOn to the System button. Task buttons, which can appear anywhere on the screen, display the 'Open files / programs' list you can get to by tapping on a file or program's name at the top right corner of the screen. Tapping on a button takes you to that program. This is a useful feature if SwitchOn is set to appear when you turn on your Revo, but is spoilt by the huge 'About' button which often spans a lot of the screen's width or height, depending on the buttons' orientation and how many programs you have open.

Mapping SwitchOn to the System button allows you to open SwitchOn instead of System when you tap on System at the bottom right corner of the screen. Personally, I found this annoying, because you can only get to System via the 'Open files / programs' list or SwitchOn's Task buttons, but System mapping can be disabled. You might find it useful.

One bug has been fixed as well. Tapping on the Revo text on the system information screen no longer tries to set the 'backlight' status. Some of the misspellings have been corrected as well - this being written by a German company, you might expect some, but it's better if they are spelt right. One of the menu options, 'Choose Sound', is a little ambiguous, since SwitchOn uses two sounds. It's actually the startup sound it is referring to.

Unfortunately, version 1.96 seems to have acquired some new bugs. The program freezes sometimes, requiring a kill (executed by going to the 'Open files / programs' list, choosing the frozen program and pressing Ctrl + Shift + E). Also, moving the Agenda view up and down causes the icons on that page to 'smear' down (see screenshot below).

A definite plus point for SwitchOn is its ability to be customised - the Preferences menu with its seven entries shows this from the outset! The Task buttons can appear anywhere on screen, Agenda to-dos can be displayed depending on priority and refresh times can be entered in 10ths of a second.

The freeware SwitchOn is useful if you need to see your Agenda often at a glance, or find the other features helpful, but has some bugs which will not be fixed now due to SwitchOn becoming shareware from version 2 onwards.

To find out what's being developed at the moment for SwitchOn, I had a look at SwitchOn Pro 2.21, which is shareware - $17.50 US including shipping and handling from vorbauer.com.

In SwitchOn Pro, the Taskbuttons have been improved by removing the About button and adding icons to the open programs list. You need to tell the program to find the icons, though, and they can use up a fair amount of time and memory space. It does make the task list look smarter, though.

One pretty unique feature in SwitchOn Pro is the option to create new virtual drive letters, mapping them to folders. For instance, the R: drive could point to C:\Documents\Reports\. If you've used MS-DOS, you might recognise this feature - it's very much like the DOS 'subst' command. The problem is, the Revo's software doesn't tend to give you a choice of drive letters, as the Revo cannot take CompactFlash disks or PC cards. This limits the usefulness of this feature, unfortunately.

Annoyingly, the problem with Revo batteries appearing to remain at 0% unless you manually adjust voltages still hasn't been fixed. I wish SwitchOn would detect that I am using a Revo and adjust the voltages automatically when it is first run.

There are a few more items which need attention as well. If the amount of free memory drops into the kilobytes, SwitchOn appears to get its display wrong. In the screenshot, it looks like I have 600K free when I actually had over 800K. Also, the Quickhelp, meant to show you what the icons on the information screen mean, could do with an update, as the information is for version one. The Agenda view's icon-smearing is also not fixed.

After reading this, you might think that I don't like SwitchOn Pro. Actually, it's quite an innovative program, but it has some bugs in it which really ought to be fixed. But, as I mentioned earlier, if they don't bother you too much and you could use its features then SwitchOn Pro could be very handy.