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Do you ever notice that sometimes (but not all the time), that when you do a reset, or the Treo has crashed and reset on its own that the phone doesn’t turn back on? For me, that’s quite an annoyance because obviously, when the phone isn’t turned on, I won’t be able to receive any phone calls. Sometimes it just happens when it’s in my pocket so I’m not aware that the phone has reset by itself and the phone hasn’t turned back on. So, depending on when I discover that the phone is off, which can be a few minutes (highly unlikely) to a few hours to a day (well, maybe not), I am inaccessible during that period, which may annoy people who have been trying to get a hold of me. Especially for anyone like me who no longer have a landline, it’s obviously of utmost importance to stay accessible and connected. Well, here’s a freeware solution to this problem.

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Radio Control by Chris Hobbs is such a great little program that does the job so well. First of all, it’s FREE and you know how much I love freewares. Second, the program works very well. You can set it to turn on the radio after every reset (whether it is a manual soft reset or a crash) or have it turn on or off the radio at a scheduled time (for example, turning it off before you go to bed and turning it back on in the morning). Third, the program is quite small in size. I love functional programs that are small in size so they don’t take up much RAM.

The program is very simple to use. Download it, install it. Run it. You will see something similar to the screenshot above. If you want the Treo to turn on the cellular phone after a soft reset, simply tap on the On button. If you want to schedule a specific time to turn on and off the cellular phone, tap on the time beside the Radio On: or Radio Off: and set it by tapping on the arrows to set the time. It’s that simple.

For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

As you can see in the screenshot, at the top, the program offers you the option of either turning the Phone on or off after a reset. Underneath, you can schedule the Phone to turn On or Off at a specific time. This can be very helpful when you need to turn the phone on and off at specific times during the day (eg. during worktime, when sleeping, etc).

That’s it. That is the program. It’s simple and it works.

Video at YouTube

Here are my observations:

Obviously, you can tell that I like this program. As I’ve mentioned already, it offers what I look for in a program: it’s small in size, it works without any problems, and it’s FREE. What else can you ask for?

Here are some suggestions for the program should Chris Hobbs, the developer wish to implement in an update. It’s very unlikely since Chris Hobbs has not responded to comments and requests on his site for quite a while but I will still provide my suggestions regardless.

I think that it would be very helpful to be able to have a week full of settings so that we can set a specific time to turn the phone on and off on a certain day of the week while on other days, we can set a different time. This can be very helpful for those who work shifts so that the radio will turn on and off according to his shifts, so that he doesn’t have to change it daily or after each shift. Right now, there’s only one setting available.

On a similar note, I think it could also be very handy if the program also offers a “temporary” setting where I can set the Treo to turn off for 30 minutes from now and have it turn back on automatically. This would be helpful for those who may be required to do so at places like hospitals or church services, etc where there’s a temporary need to turn the phone off. Unfortunately, for most of us, we tend to forget to turn the phone back on. So, having such a setting would be very helpful. Of course, that can be set in the program but to have a countdown setting would make it somewhat easier for a temporary measure rather than a “set” time that the program offers.

On the other hand, although the program is very simple and straightforward to use, it almost seems TOO SIMPLE. I’d like to have more features (as I’ve already suggested and explained previously). Other than that, I really don’t have much complaints. It simply works!

Review Summary

As I’ve already discussed, Radio Control is an excellent program. It’s tiny size, simple to use and just works. And it’s FREE. Nowadays, since I tend to set a daily backup schedule, I can be assured that the Phone will automatically turn on when I schedule a reset before I start up RescoBackup and that the phone will turn back on after every reset regardless of whether it was a manual soft reset or a crash.

There’s really nothing more that I need to say about this program. It just WORKS. How about you? Have you tried Radio Control? Or do you know of another program that does this that you like? If so, please share by leaving a comment below! Thanks

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