Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

When it comes to programs that sit in the background on a multi-tasking machine, it pays to either go to one extreme or the other. On the one hand, a tiny program which just turns the backlight on at certain times of the day (e.g. NiteLite) is great because there's literally nothing to go wrong. On the other hand, given that you've got something sitting in memory monitoring system events, you might as well go the whole hog and have it do as much as possible. This latter is the approach taken by BackLite+. I was looking at v2.0, grabbed from Jason Kneen's web site.

In addition to the basic backlight control, BackLite+ offers such delicacies as a graphical sketchpad, text-based Post-It notes, voice notes, battery state warnings and access to the Series 5 Task list, all of which can be configured to pop up automatically (or not) on power up of your palmtop. You get some idea of the sheer number of options available when you see five separate preferences dialogs on offer!

In use, BackLite+ can be thought of as a cross between NiteLite, Sketch and Agenda's To-Do lists. I have to confess that I preferred to put up with an extra keypress or two and use the built-in applications (as God intended?) but I could also see the potential in an application which brought such easy combined functionality up on screen automatically every time the Series 5 is turned on. For some users, this will be very useful indeed.

The only drawback (as with all other background programs, like NiteLite, Inteliscrn etc) is that BackLite+ gets closed by PsiWin during a backup and never gets re-opened. This is a flaw in EPOC/32 and is a real shame, as the first time you need this sort of utility after a backup it won't be there and will have to be started manually.

One thing I would have liked was to have been able to enter Post-It Notes simply by starting typing, à la Agenda. BackLite+ is shareware, with a few of its most advanced options restricted to registered users, which seems fair enough.

My overall verdict? Professionally presented, packed to the gunnels and something every Series 5 owner should at least examine.

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