As I’ve played more with the Omnia, I’ve discovered the solutions to some of the “cons” that I posed in my initial review a few days ago.

Selecting Multiple Email Messages

In WM 6.0, I could select multiple contiguous email messages by dragging my stylus or finger up or down over the messages I wanted to select. That obviously doesn’t work on the Omnia because that gesture scrolls the list of messages. Well, I’ve found out that you can indeed still select multiple messages, and in fact this feature is much improved because now they don’t have to be contiguous.

When you’re in the list of messages, just hit Menu, Select and you can choose to Select All, Select All Below, or Select Several. If you choose the last one, you can just tap whatever messages you want to select, contiguous or not, and they’re all selected. This is actually much more functional than the old way – you just have to find it. :)

My only gripe about it is that you can’t do the same thing in the file system (or at least not in the same way). If I’m in File Explorer, I can select all files, but I can’t select several to delete, copy, move, or send. That would be a very useful feature and maybe it’s included in one of the third party file management programs. I’ll have to check that out.

Missing Symbols Found!

In relation to one of my other previous complaints, I’ve found the parentheses (and the underscore symbol, which was also missing) on the soft keyboard. First press the sym key, then at the bottom left, press the 1/9 key. This takes you to the second of 9 pages of symbol keys, where you’ll find the parentheses and underscore, along with brackets, =, <,>, the symbol and copyright symbols and other useful things.

I would put a screenshot of the additional symbol pages here, but I can’t. Keep reading to find out why.

Turning up the volume

Another minor complaint I had was about the sound volume; it was too low. I found out that you can adjust this by running a file called SoundTester.exe in the Windows folder. By default, you may think you don’t have such a file. The trick is, in File Explorer, to select Menu and then Show All Files.

Here is a post on the Omnia message board that tells you how to make the adjustments: Make Your Omnia Louder!

More Winterface Fallout

Today I discovered that my restore from backup after the Winterface fiasco didn’t completely work after all. Two of the third party programs I had installed, which were working fine before I installed Winterface, no longer work. Magic Button, which closes programs when you press the X in the upper right corner of a window instead of minimizing them, won’t start. CapSure, my screen capture program, also doesn’t work. With both, I get messages that say “The file cannot be opened. Either it is not signed with a trusted certificate or one of its components cannot be found.”

Grrr. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the programs, with the same results. Both of these programs were freeware so I’m not out any money, but they were both very useful programs and I’m annoyed at no longer being able to use them. The program that I did pay for (spbBackup itself) still works fine. The issue seems to be the unsigned certificates of the free programs.

I can live without Magic Button. I’m willing to give WM 6.1 a chance to manage memory for me and see how that works. In searching for a replacement, I ran across this explanation of the reason why Microsoft doesn’t make the X button close programs, and it actually makes sense: The Emperor Has No Close.

The loss of CapSure is much more irritating. I tried installing Ilium Screen Capture. It installed okay, but none of the hardware buttons on the Omnia seem to work with it so it’s useless. A search for additional screen capture utilities turns up several that put your WM screen on your PC monitor (not what I want; I want to capture on the device) or advanced capture tools that cost $20-50. I just want a simple little capture program that works as CapSure did before I messed everything up with Winterface. Unless/until I find one, I guess there will be no more screenshots accompanying these posts. :(