PowerMan Profile Manager Review
Until recently I’ve pretty much had to manually adjust one by one any of the many settings on my Treo and Centro – such as Volume, Brightness, Bluetooth, Ringer Switch and Phone Radio – whenever I needed to and then also remember to switch them back on.
Now thanks to the excellent PowerMan Profile Manager software I can much more easily adjust and control a vast array of settings by building up to eight unique “profiles” (screenshot below left) which I can launch either manually when needed and/or automatically at preset days and times.
As you can see from the screenshot above right, each PowerMan Profile offers customization of up to 17 system settings and you can play with these to build your own perfect model. [Please note that “Stay On” is a setting that keeps your screen On if plugged in to a power source; “KB Light” enables or disables your keyboard’s backlighting and “Radio” switches your phone On or Off.]
In my particular case I built three main Profiles – Normal (above), Night and Bedtime (below) – making only small adjustments to each for my needs at different times of the day. For example I set Brightness at 80% for Normal, 50% for Night and 30% for Bedtime.
Next I used these three main Profiles to set PowerMan’s “Auto Profile Switching (APS)” (screenshots below) which allows you to create a sort of “Profile Scheduling” by automatically enabling/disabling profiles at certain times and days. In this particular case I built a “Weekdays” and “Weekends” set that uses all three of my profiles.
PowerMan also offers another “Options” screen (below left) but I personally left this untouched.
Last but not least, possibly the single most important and useful PowerMan feature is that it enables you to activate a particular profile (below right) for a preset period (from 15mins to 3 hours or using a Custom Timer). For example, this function allows you to easily set your “Meeting” profile for the duration of your meeting and then automatically revert back to your “Normal” profile. Another scenario is activating the “Cinema” profile (with Ringer and Messaging Volume OFF) at the start of the movie for 2 hours for example. [Please note that Auto Profile must be enabled for these temporary profile activations to work.]
If like me you had frequently moved your Ringer Switch to silent during a meeting or at the movies only to completely forget to move it back on when you came out you will undoubtedly like me appreciate just how useful PowerMan is on this front.
Overall, PowerMan is an excellent (if not the best) profile manager – it requires a little bit of time to setup properly but once this is done and you begin to use it daily you’ll be wondering how you managed to go by without it for so long.
[Separately, if you’re wondering about the look of my screenshots I use PalmRevolt with my favourite “Aqua Green” skin… Also, remember that you can use the coupon code BESTSELLERS in your cart to get 20% Off this and any other application in our Treo and Centro Software Store this month (not valid in the Treonauts Accessories Store.)]
Treonauts always have the power…
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Comments
You say that it's "not the best" - I'm curious which profile manager you consider the best? I tested out both PowerMan and ProfileCare before purchasing PowerMan, and found PowerMan vastly superior. ProfileCare was buggy, underdocumented, and overcomplicated.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention the new Auto Brightness feature at all. I think this feature is unique to PowerMan. It uses the built-in camera to dynamically adjust screen brightness for the ambient light level, similar to the iPhone's dynamic brightness. It's a pretty killer feature to go unmentioned.
This program seems... awesome. I have loooooonng desired for ANYONE to write a SIMPLE program that would simply let me silence EVERYTHING on the phone. It would have relatively no bells, no whistles - I'm talking something along the lines of the "soft reset" programs we've seen. Open the program, make everything silent - done! (Please don't tell me I can flip the switch to vibrate - in quiet places like church, class, theaters, etc. you can still hear the vibration. And no, I don't want to turn off the phone - not everyone leaves voicemail.)
I, too, found Profilecare because it seemed to be the only thing out there with the options to do anything close to shutting everything off but the phone... and I will second the notion that it was way too much and way too complicated.
Until someone writes a simple "silence all" option, I'll gladly spend $13 on this.
Wait a minute... "LED on for missed call/SMS Action" - "solid red". Did they get this option open for the Centro yet?!?!
Avdi - my text should read: "PowerMan is an excellent - if not _the_ best"... Basically, it means to say "the best"... ;-)
Also, I totally agree that the Auto Brightness feature is very cool indeed - something which I did forget to bring up...
lightYear - I can't disagree with you, I'd also like more things to be a lot simpler these days...
SamJackson - unfortunately, the LED alert functionality is not working on the Centro (yet)...
Cheers, A.
Hey Andrew,
I really hoped we'd gotten "revert back" out of our system... :-(
Having said that, I'll give you some encouragement - thanks to your covering this app, I have tried it, like it, and will most likely register it.
One thing I've always hated about the Treo is that it doesn't provide a lot of flexibility with respect to "profiles" - I love how this app manages profiles and then goes the extra mile to allow for timed automation.
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