S60 3rd: Best Taskman Review

[im92109210]

It has been a few days since any new program has been released so I thought of reviewing an older application but is essentially important to most users who want the most out of their phone.

Best Taskman Review

Best Taskman, as the name suggests is a task manager. It allows the user to handle open applications and allows them to switch to another application, get their information, close them, etc acting as a (Ctrl+Alt+Del combination) option for Series 60 3rd Edition. It does have a few rivals, but being the latest version released it was worth testing out.
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Being a trial version, this message will pop up every time the application starts.
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The main screen of the application is the simple view of the open applications. On top it provides the time and date and the left and right arrows instead of having the application’s name like most applications.
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Pressing the left key will bring the “Memory” screen, which shows the storage space available on the device.
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Pressing left again, will bring the “Quick start” screen which lists all the applications that can be opened with a quick keyboard combination (explained below)
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[im92109210]

Back to the main screen of running applications, pressing “Options” will bring up a list of choices such as the selected application’s information, closing it, closing all and settings. The first selection under “Settings” is “Settings”
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Inside “Settings” the user can select whether Best Taskman can be used instead of the built in one (Pressing and holding Menu) or with a custom key selection.
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In the above picture there are 3 main options; one of them is called “Switcher hotkey” which is similar to the (Alt+Tab) function of a PC which lets the user switch between applications that are running. Unfortunately I could not get a screen shot since it would be pressing a lot of buttons at once. Using the key combination shown above (Shift+Menu) will open a list similar to the one below. Incase the user decides to remain on the application working in the background the shift is to remain pressed and the “C” is to be pressed to remove the pop up.

The second option above is “Quick start hotkey” this is similar to the (Alt+Tab) function visually but it lets the user open applications that are on the “Quick Start” list selected by the user to open those applications as fast as possible.
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The last option from above is to select whether the application should start upon startup or not.

The second option under “Settings” is Tasklist exceptions and ‘close all’ exceptions, which lets the user decide a certain list of applications that can be closed together, leaving some applications open which are out of the exception list. For example: If a user has messages, log, best safe, handy profiles, recorder, and a messenger running and wishes to always keep the messenger on, the user could include all the other applications to the exception list and when ‘close all’ exceptions is selected, all the applications will be closed except for the messenger.
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This is the how the user selects the applications which are to be on the exception’s list. The number of applications selected is also showed above and has a search function to quickly find applications.
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[im92109210]

Under settings, there is “View” which lets the user select one of the three main options “Open Applications”, “Memory”, and “Quick start”. For the advanced user, there is an advanced section which lets the user see “processes”, “All open applications”, and “installed applications”. The “All open applications” section has hidden applications too.
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Being a task manager, the main closing option is “Hide” so it can work in the background and allow the user to use all the shortcut features. Under options it can be Exited like any other application.

About Best Taskman.
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A task manager is a very crucial part of every new device these days and it is always needed to free space. That is where Best Taskman just begins, I found the amount of features was plentiful and the quick shortcuts to quick applications and running applications very useful. The (Alt+Tab) design pop up is nice to see and a Windows user would definitely find it common but it would have been much nicer if it followed the current selected theme instead of the Windows look but that’s just a cosmetic factor which isn’t the main idea.

Experience: The application is very stable and works perfectly on the E90. It is very well built to support both screens and never crashed or slowed down. This program pretty much covers all aspects of a task manager and is, at the same time, very easy to use. I appreciated how it used the top part of the screen where the program name would usually be, which would leave more room for the actual program to work with. I would like to see more applications utilize that space too. It is certainly a better job than the previous version (Tested version was the latest 2.01). Some people mentioned there were a few crashes/not starting of the application but I haven’t met any. I rate it a 9/10.

The program tested was a trial and not a full version although it was fully functional.
The trial and full version can be found at the My-symbian.com Online Shop (http://shop.my-symbian.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=695&jid=1B98E84791E7D269562A2D88E53F428C&platformId=4&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=190144)

[mewtwosama]

With SmartphoneWare's release of Tracker, this software is quite obsolete.

Its mostly the same thing, but better.

[im92109210]

I'll give that a whirl and see the "but better" part for myself :D

[im92109210]

Some people pointed out it was worth reviewing Handy Taskman Also since its the main rival to Best Taskman reviewed above. So I did :)

Handy Taskman Review (http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=23229)

Tracker seems to be the correct rival to Handy Taskman but it has more desktop kind of features/functions.