There are dozens of list programs for PDA's available for free. Of course, if you get one of those, you are tied to someone else's interpretation of the problem. Therefore, I decided to write my own shopping list program so that I would stop ending up at the store standing there thinking, "Now, what was it I came here for?" Heck, I'm not even all that old!

The program works great, and has all the features I wanted: Categorical items, items not tied to specific categories, easy handling of (optional) number of units, etc.

Great!


Slow loading!


One freebie I downloaded came up very fast. Of couse, it was much simpler, and kept everything in two text files. I am using a database saved on an SD card. It takes 6 seconds for the program to load up. Most of that is establishing the DB connection, and reading in data.

Does anybody have any thoughts on how to speed up the reaction time of the program? I even considered storing an image of the initial screen, and tossing that up first. Using that technique, the user would see the controls appear to lag (since they would only be an image, not the real thing) for a few seconds, but that seems just a little hokey.