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After having a PDA for a while you may want to be able show it off without actually showing off the unit. One way to do this is to capture the screen from your PDA. For this Review I have chosen to use an HP Jornada 568. This handheld unit is capable of displaying 240x320 in 24Bit colour.

Some examples of why you might want to capture the screen would be to show a high score in a game, display network (or any other) setting, or for Press Reviews (like this one). There are emulators for the PC for both the PalmOS and the Pocket PC that can capture screen images but there is nothing like capturing the real thing.

Pocket ScreenSnap from Developer One captures images from the Pocket PC. Of course it does more that just capture them, it also displays them as well. You can display one image at time or increments up to 10x10 showing a total of 100 images on one screen.

When the images are transferred to the Windows PC they are in BMP format, from the Jornada 568 they are 240x320 in 24bit BMP's. Once opened as a BMP most image editors can save as other formats such as JPG or GIF.  This way you could store the images for later use, email them or post to a web site.

Once ScreenSnap is started it allows one of the buttons to be the trigger to capture the screen. The default button is button #2 and this can be changed in the options. Once the screen has been captured you have the option of renaming the default name. Or if you prefer it can just save the file without the prompt. Using this option you can continue running the program without interruption. The only delay you will encounter with this option is the press of the button. There is no noticeable delay when the image is being saved.

The capture does not work in all applications as they may use the same button and one will override the other. I could not get it work properly when running PortaPinball or when the handheld was in the cradle connected to the PC. I tried again and then it worked just fine in the cradle. It's just finicky sometimes, nothing serious but a bit of an annoyance.  

Final Words:
Anyone can use Pocket ScreenSnap as there are many uses it can serve. This is a simple to use utility that can be used to capture the screen from most programs running on a Pocket PC.