Windows Phone Thoughts: The World in Your Pocket – Lexipedia 1.1 for Pocket PC

Product Category: Reference Encyclopedia
Manufacturer: Revolutionary Software Front
Where to Buy: Handango (affiliate)
Price: 19.99 USD (or 17.99 or 14.99 or 13.99 – see review)
System Requirements: Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 2003 SE. There’s no specific mention of VGA support, but it seems to work fine on my Axim X50v in a QVGA mode. A SmartPhone version is also available from their website.
Specifications: Lexipedia needs about 500K of memory to work. The ‘standard’ version of the encyclopedia will require at least 225Mb free on a storage card. An ‘unabridged’ version is also available, which will require 650Mb.

Pros:

• Extensive collection of over 550,000 articles (either abridged or complete, depending upon version selected) from the Wikipedia Foundation;
  
• No cost difference for abridged vs. full article version;
  
• Fast response time to searches;
  
• ’Sounds Like’ technology allows you to find things, even if you don’t know the spelling.

Cons:

• Significant amount of storage space required for articles (but what did you expect?);
  
• Longer articles in the abridged version simply cut-off mid sentence;
  
• Use of plurals can sometimes limit responses;
  
• No way to update the material (currently, but they are working on it).

Summary: Using the open source Wikipedia Encyclopedia Project as its base, Lexipedia provides over 550,000 articles which have been clipped and compressed to fit in available storage for most Pocket PCs. If you’re the type of person who likes to have good quick-reference material close at hand, this may be just the thing you’re looking for.

Read on for the full review!