[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] prestonmcafee:
I am feeling frustrated. I have now tried EIGHT weather programs, none of which deliver what I would like to have. What I want is

1. A discrete Today screen line with the 7 day forecast for a chosen city, which can readily be changed.

2. Ability to set the program to sync by Activesync (or wifi) only (when I am traveling to foreign countries) and otherwise to autoupdate. I'd be happies with 'autoupdate only by activesync'.

3. Either a small memory footprint, or the ability to run off the SD card

4. Good forecasts (e.g. in US: NOAA or weather.com and *NOT* gismeteo.ru)

5. International cities

I would also be happy just to have RSS feeds for the cities I am interested in, but RSS feeds seem to only go two days out and be mostly composed of advertisements for weather.com.

Here are my notes on the programs I have tried.

SPB Weather 1.6.2: Version 1.5 worked well for me until recently, and has a great interface. However it kept downloading data by GPRS connection even though I had set it not to do so, and used a lot of data in Europe, which cost me at least $100. This problem (others report similar problems, though usually the opposite: set to update but didn't) was allegedly fixed by an upgrade to 1.6.2, but the upgrade killed off weather.com as a source and the new source -- gismeteo.ru -- doesn't have data for Pasadena, CA weather! (It found the city, but came back 'data not available.' Moreover, the program is over 2MB and doesn't run well of the SD card. Hence my search for a new program.

Fizz Weather 2.3: This program seemed very promising. It has all the right settings. The interface is klugy -- it takes a lot of clicks to change cities, see forecasts, etc. -- but it promises to do everything I want and has weather maps besides. However, it messed up the activesync connection somehow; once it updated over activesync, nothing else could run, even after the program stopped. Fizz ran well off minisd, though. I had to wipe and install a backup to recover activesync functionality.

Weathertogo 4.0: Free! Max of 3 cities and US only. No good for international.

Stocks and Weather Today; This program might work but is the opposite of discrete -- moving icons and large images and spinning storms. This is ideal for some people, but I found it too distracting and garish.

Pocketweather: This seems to be very similar to spb weather, perhaps a little better (extra screens of information available). But it has the same defects, too: gismeteo.ru data and the user is strongly advised not to run off minisd card.

Weather forecast 101: Attractive price ($1.99) but US only.

ADB Weather: Couldn't find Pasadena, CA data, probably uses gismeteo.ru feed.

Handy Weather (penreader.com): 3MB in size, but runs off SD card. Miserable city selection (but not a big deal since adding cities isn't frequent). Requires too much today screen real estate -- no discrete mode. Very economical on data: 2KB per city per download claimed, 3KB experienced. This is what I am currently using, with a link in PHM traylaunch to fire it up, and the today screen part disabled. Subscription service ($15/year); data from their own site, I think from accuweather (hearsay).