The iPhone gets a lot of attention these days, and rightly so. It's an attractive phone/media player with a beautiful interface. And Apple brought the idea of an innovative finger-friendly multi-touch display to the masses. But you know what? The iPhone isn't for everyone. There are plenty of things it can't do, or that you can do better with another device. And while the price of the phone continues to drop, you have to pay a rather pricey phone bill every month if you really want to make use of the phone.

With that in mind, Download Squad brings you anti-iPhone day. Throughout the day, we'll be looking at alternatives to the iPhone. To kick things off, I wanted to review some of the posts of DLS past that have already shown that there's little you can do with an iPhone that you can't already do with a Wndows Mobile-based phone.

Program Launchers

Somewhere between the time when Steve Jobs first demoed the iPhone and the day it actually hit the shelves, third party developers decided it would be cool to create an iPhone-like interface for Windows Mobile. Probably the most interesting project is FreeStyleWM, which started out its life as WhoNeedsAniPhone.

But not every third party developer wanted to replicate the iPhone interface. Some were just inspired enough to go out and create their own easy to use, finger-friendly program launchers and other applications. Thus GoodWin and iSwish were born.

Meanwhile, before the iPhone was even threatening your pocketbook, folks were puting out software that takes Windows Mobile and makes it feel like an entirely different operating system. Over a year ago, we brought you a roundup of applications designed to make Windows Mobile look and feel a bit more like Windows XP or Vista.

Back when I was a full time commuter (spending almost as much time on the train every day as I did in the office), I spent a lot of time and energy converting my Windows Mobile PDA from a simple productivity tool into a one-stop entertainment shop. While you could buy a fancy phone that will be obsolete in a year and sign up for an expensive data plan so that you can watch the occasional YouTube clip, my weapon of choice was the off-line media viewer.

My commute is now much shorter, but every time I go away for the weekend or take a vacation I'm glad I spent so much time tracking down these tools.

News/eBook readers

During the early years of Windows CE, AvantGo was the undisputed champion of mobile web browsing software. The service allowed you to save mobile versions of selected web pages to your device's memory and catch up on news from The New York Times, CNet, and hundreds of other sources on the go. Every time you sync your device, your subscriptions are updated.

But the software hasn't been updated in years, and for many users it has become obsolete. While offering up hundreds of websites was sufficient a few years ago, today AvantGo's offerings seem terribly limited.

Congratulations. You've spent the weekend managing not to buy an iPhone, which is more than we can say for at least two Download Squad writers.

Sure, the new phone is the coolest thing since sliced bread was replaced by low-carb bagels. But aside from an innovative new interface and one of the best web browsers ever to grace a mobile device, does it really do anything new?

Today we'll take a look at some of the features that make the iPhone special -- and show you how your 2 year old Windows Mobile phone or PDA can accomplish most of the same tasks.

The other day we told you about WinVibe, a new free music player for Windows Mobile devices. I started off thinking I was going to write a roundup of all the other music players for this week's Mobile Minute. But after thinking about it for a while, it occurred to me that there are just so many great free programs available that there's almost no reason to pay for music software.

That said, if you're interested in some advanced features, by all means check out Conduits Pocket Player, 40th Floor's iPlay, Nero Mobile, and PocketMind's Pocket Music. But the following programs will perform most of the same functions, and in some cases, even more.

Okay, it's official. There's no reason to use the mobile version of Windows Media Player, and there's no reason to pay for an alternative program.

Sure, you could pick up a first class commercial product like Conduits Pocket Player or 40th Floor's iPlay (worst customer service ever). But with free programs like MortPlayer and GSPlayer I've never seen the need to spend money.

The newest kid on the block is WinVibe, an amazingly versatile little player out of Korea (while the download link is in Korean, all the program menus are in English). There's a VGA version available as well.

WinVibe supports MP3, OGG, WMA, ASF, and WAV playback, which places it at or near the top of the heap when it comes to Windows Mobile music players. Those level meters you see, they work. There's also a working equalizer spectrum.

You also get a nice playlist manager, sleep timer, button mapping, support for HTTP and SHOUTcast streams and playback speed changing.

There are some nice sound effects, including bass boost, 3d chorus, surround sound, reverb, and echo. It even recognizes that I'm running it on a Dell Axim X50v, which has hardware support for bass and treble boosting, as well as a 3D audio setting. On the downside, it takes a long time to load large music folder and playlists, and WinVibe appears to use more CPU than MortPlayer. I also like MortPlayer because of its support for audiobooks and bookmarks.

I've been using Pocket PCs for about six years. I've owned more PDAs than I can keep count of. And on each one, the first thing I do when I open the box is install a couple of free programs that Microsoft should be including standard (or integrating into the operating system).

1. Pelmar Wisbar Microsoft developers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that users can't be trusted to close programs when they're short on RAM. So rather than put a close button on Windows Mobile software, Microsft puts an X button that means "minimize." Only when you've got way too many programs open will your device automatically close some. Either that, or you have to click over to settings/system/memory/running programs to close programs individually.

There are a number of third party programs that let you configure the X button to actually close programs. Most also include a handy task switcher for flipping back and forth between running programs. Some, such as Wisbar Advance offer advanced screening to completely change the look and feel of your PDA. I'm partial to the free Pelmar Wisbar v 1.4.2 which has been around for years. It takes up almost no memory and does exactly what I need it to do. It's not compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 though, so if you're running a newer Windows Mobile device, you might want to check out Magic Button, which performs a similar function.