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Subject: Re: Big Test Report Chess Programs for Pocket PC & Palm !

Author: enrico carrisco

Date: 15:29:06 09/20/05

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Hello Axel.

It appears you have spent a great amount of time on the review and such a
commitment on time is a noble thing.

I have a couple of questions about a few of the features the programs were
ranked on as well as the overall evaluation of Palm HIARCS.

Clearly aspects like board, piece design and a few other odd categories are of a
subjective nature and what one person finds appealing the next could find
unappealing.

However, a few other categories caught my eye either because they did not make
clear sense to me or were just plain erroneous as they apply to Palm HIARCS.

1) Hashing - I'm having a hard time making the connection as to how this is
relevant - surely what matters is chess strength, not that someone can allocate
some memory!  Maybe there should be a category for pawn hash table or memory for
the move list!?

2) In the "Save Game" ranking, Palm HIARCS scored 4/10 - Last I checked, Palm
HIARCS saved games fine.  Is this not a "has it" or "doesn't have it" type of
feature?

3) In the "Level Adjustment" ranking, Palm HIARCS scored 6/10 but you can adjust
more on Palm HIARCS than on Fritz 8!  ??

4) Engine strength counts for ONLY 10/383 points - 2.6%??  I think engine
strength is definitely relevant on such slow devices compared to PCs.

5) In the "Fischer Time" ranking, Palm Hiarcs scored 3/5 - Where is it missing
functionality?  You can even set fischer time on primary, secondary and the
third time control.

6) There is an opening book style selector on Hiarcs but it scores 0.

7) Palm HIARCS scored 0 for "Tutor/Trainer" even though it clearly shows book
moves, legal moves and incorporates a Coach Blunder Alert.

8) Highlight Legal Moves scores 0 - This is odd because Palm HIARCS has a
function called "highlightlegalmoves" which, suprise suprise, highlights legal
moves!

9) "Move Entering" scores only 1, yet Palm HIARCS has normal move entry
(from/to), smart entry (to) and 5 way key entry.

10) Playout scores 0 even though Palm HIARCS has autoplay support!?

11) Save energy scores 0 but the set Elo levels ALL save energy.

12) Next best scores only 1/2 - However, Palm HIARCS has a full next best
function -- certainly more than Palm Chess Genius which scored 2/2 but does not
have the function at all!?!?

My next question would be:  Did you actually test and run Palm HIARCS yourself
for this review?

Looking forward to your reply,

Enrico L. Carrisco.



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