LudusP: Reclaim your buttons!
If you are one of the Trēo 650 owners that have recently upgraded to the Trēo 700p, you may have found out that the excitement of getting a new Trēo with more memory and higher-speed data access was combined with some initial frustration due to the changes that were made to the location and function of the buttons on the Trēo 700p. If you know what I’m talking about, then you should know about LudusP.
Here is a list of the main changes to the button locations:
| Treo 650 | Treo 700 |
|---|---|
| The 650 has two shift buttons for typing caps, one on the left and one on the right. | The 700p changed the right shift button to become the menu button. |
| The Home button is located to the top left of the 5-way control | The Home button was moved to the far right where the End/Power button used to be located. |
| The Menu button is located on the top right of the 5-way control. | The Menu button was moved to where the right shift button was located, near the bottom right of the keyboard. |
| The End/Power button is located on the fart right above the keyboard, next to the Messages button. | The End/Power button was moved to the top right of the 5-way control, where the Menu button used to be located. |
| The Home button would launch your custom launcher (such as ZLauncher, LauncherX, etc.) if it was installed. | The Home button always launched the Palm Launcher even if you had installed a custom launcher. |
Some of these problems (such as the Home button launching ZLauncher) have been fixed by third parties, but others continue to result in problems for long-time 650 users. That is, until LudusP came along.
LudusP allows you to:
- Make Home Go To YOUR Launcher: Forces the Home button to launch your default launcher!
- Unify and Remap Phone Buttons: The 700p has two hard buttons for the phone. LudusP allows to you merge the functionality into a single button and the use the other button for launching another application.
- Make Menu Shift: Restore the right shift key to the way it was on the 650.
- Remap the Home Button: Use the home button launch another application
- Launch ANY application, Preference Panel or DA: Using any unassigned hard button.
- Access the Command Bar: Not normally possible on the Trēo
- Disable LudusP in Specific Applications: If you have a program that is already using the hard buttons for something else, you can add that program to a list and LudusP will disable itself when that program is running.
If you could put a price on eliminating frustration, $5 for LudusP seems like a pretty good deal.
Related Links:
Download LudusP from mytreo.net downloads area.
Visit the LudusP website.
Filed under: Software reviews
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I have had tons of problems with the new layout of the buttons.
Thanks John For a great review!
JH
Excellent graph. It would be interesting to include the Treo 600 too - losing the power button on top and ability to program the 1st and 4th hardware button was a major idiocy moment in design.
Palm seems to love changing things around that don’t need to be changed at the expense of concentrating on the things that *should* be fixed.
I tried LudusP for a few days and it had it’s advantages - but it reset back to the “default” behaviour of the buttons too many times for me to rely on it. As the review states regarding the Launcher - they seem to have tweaked things to force us to live with their default programs.
If Palm would just allow direct configuration to all of the hardware buttons (as we had for years), programming and running all these stupid hacks would be completely unnecessary. Maybe they’ll realize their error in the next firmware update - but I doubt it - we’re stuck kludging around it again.
I’ve had great success with this program. A winner for sure!
The devs of this app have not sent me my product key nor have they responded to my emails after 4 days!!! Atrocious customer service. I’m about to file a complaint with PayPal.
Keep trying KabukiAssassin. I think the developer gets busy sometimes, but should eventually respond.
Having problems with my Treo!!! I cannot use my keys at all, the phone works with the touch pad but I cannot use the keys.
Gee, after reading all of these comments, it seems that the only advantage a 700p provides is more core memory and a faster download speed.
I was considering an upgrade to the 700p, but I’ve been discouraged by most of what I’ve read and heard from those that own a 700p.
As I consider the button configuration flap, I might as well stand steadfast with my 650…