Reading your Palm
The goal of these applications is to retain the advantages of the Palm, including its straightforward interface, streamlined applications and ease of use. "The focus of the Palm platform has always been very much on ease of use, user experience and the ease of the process of getting the data on the handheld," says Robert Steele, chief technical officer at software vendor Ibrite. "There's also the practical reality of good battery life. These devices don't need to do everything - just do well the certain things that customers want."
However, there's little doubt that these computers, even as their processing and memory muscles increase, will continue as complements to, rather than replacements for, portable computers. The Palm offers the undeniable lure of instant access to information, but the notebook computer remains and will remain the preferred technology for creation of information.
"Anyone familiar with the Palm operating system [OS] knows that it isn't a desktop operating system, and doesn't have all the capabilities of a desktop machine," says Deborah Colton, product manager at FileMaker. "It's a different model on the handheld. However, its bidirectional synchronisation makes it suited to adding and modifying information and bringing that back to the desktop."
Originally, the Palm provided only personal organiser functions - calendars, address books and to-do lists. Today, users can download a variety of business documents to the PDA.
"The expectations of users are increasing," says Kristen Garvey, spokeswoman at DataViz. "When we came out with Documents to Go, people were using the Palm to track dates and appointments. Now, there's a trend of expecting quick and easy access to documents in formats like Word and Excel."
DataViz's Documents to Go 3.0 lets users bring files onto the Palm from a number of popular formats, including 1-2-3, Excel, Quattro Pro, Word, WordPerfect and Word Pro. Once on the device, the files can be viewed and edited, although not all features - such as Excel's ability to allow formulas within cells - are supported when the files are being viewed on the handheld. However, formatting, such as bold or italics, alignment and tables are retained. The program also includes DataViz Mail, which lets users view email attachments downloaded from Outlook or Notes.
Later versions will support PowerPoint files as well.
Ibrite has already introduced powerViewer, software that lets users export Windows PowerPoint 2000 into a format that can be viewed on the Palm. The program also lets users beam their PowerPoint files to other users from a Palm. The company hopes to start shipping officeViewer, which will provide similar functionality for Word and Excel files, soon.
In April, Informal will ship its Enotate Presenter software that will allow users to make changes to Excel spreadsheets during a live presentation on a notebook or PC by using the Palm as the markup interface.
Although Microsoft has captured the lion's share of the business application market, other large software vendors are also supporting the move toward the Palm platform. In December, FileMaker introduced FileMaker Mobile Companion, which lets Palm users synchronise and transfer data between FileMaker Pro databases on a PC and a handheld. The program must be used in conjunction with FileMaker Pro 5.0 on the desktop.
