Windows Phone Thoughts: Repligo v2.0 Reviewed

Conclusions
Many of the limitations of the previous version - no bookmarks, no comments or highlighting, no text search, no desktop viewer - have been addressed, and Repligo is still a fast, slick and professionally-written application. But for me there are still a few key problems that haven't been fixed.

Firstly, the on-going inability to see pictures or Word tables along with the text in flowed view is a major drawback for the kind of documents I use day-to-day, which are full of tables. I am thus forced to use the standard zoomed mode which results in a lot of painful scrolling around, or alternatively constantly switch between views.

Secondly, almost as a result of its own success, Repligo files quickly build up into a large collection which can easily get out of hand. The file browser seems ripe for improvement, as it doesn't show the original file type, long filenames get truncated, you can't sort files in descending date order and there's no facility to filter or search for specific files. There really needs to be a better way of cataloguing all your Repligo files.

Finally, you can only have one document open at a time, so switching between documents quickly becomes painful. It's crying out for a set of document tabs (which ironically you do get on the desktop viewer). In addition it would help if the title of the currently open document was shown in the window bar.

Having said all that, Repligo is now much cheaper than when originally launched, coming in at a much more reasonable $29.95, although this is still at the upper end of the Pocket PC software price range. Those upgrading from version 1 will be charged half of this though, and whilst you can open version 1 files in version 2 you'll need to reconvert all your documents to take advantage of most of the new features.

Overall then, Repligo v2.0 is still an excellent piece of software and is heartily recommended. But it's value is questionable for existing users given the high upgrade cost, although the new features really are must-haves that you'll probably find you can't live without.