Palm and Mac users rejoice! AvantGo works flawlessly for us too.

So often, Mac users will hear about an intriguing service or software program, only to find out that the system requirements exclude them. This is no longer the case with AvantGo, the service that allows Mac (and PC) users to download information from the web into their PDAs. I have been using the service since last July, without any problems at all. In fact, I have found it immensely helpful.

I have a Palm V and an older 333 Mhz iMac running System 8.6. (Any PowerPC-based Mac running System 8.1 or higher will work. Likewise for any Palm running Palm OS 3.0 or higher.)

After establishing an account with AvantGo, I downloaded the free installer software from AvantGo’s website (www.AvantGo.com). The installer works like most Mac installer utilities. This one installed about 75 little files in various folders on my hard-disk -- all listed in the installer log it creates automatically upon completion. The vast majority of those files are part of the very extensive help file, which is provided in HTML format for easy viewing on the Mac with an internet browser, and accessible through a help button in the AvantGo control panel on the Mac.

Easy to Operate

The service is very easy to use on a Macintosh. Use your Mac to go to AvantGo’s website, and simply choose the content (“channels”) you want to download to your Palm. There are literally hundreds to choose from in various categories like business/finance, education, news/media, entertainment, sports, and technology, all designed to translate well to the small Palm screen. But you can’t take too many at once or you will exceed the available memory on your Palm. My channels, for example, include Fox News, Hollywood.com, Joke A Day, and PalmPower Magazine. These four channels take up less than 200 K of memory on my handheld.

With your software properly installed on your Mac and handheld (it’s easy to do), and you’ve chosen the channels you want, then go the HotSync Manager on your Mac. From the menu, select “Conduit Settings.” AvantGo Connect will show up in the list of conduits, along with the other conduits like Address Book, Date Book, Memo Pad, and so on. Double-click on the AvantGo Connect conduit and choose “Retrieve Web Content.” I leave the default setting at “Do Nothing” because I tend to HotSync my Palm much more frequently, sometimes several times a day, than I download content from AvantGo, which I might do at the end of the day or sometimes only once a week.

Then, with your Mac still connected to the internet (you don’t have to be logged in to the AvantGo site at the time, you just have to have a live connection to the internet), and the handheld in the cradle, press the hotsync button on the cradle. Voila! Your channels are downloaded into your Palm, which you can take with you to surf at leisure.

Most websites available

One of the coolest features of the service is the ability to define a “custom channel.” Once you log in to the AvantGo site under your user name and password, you’ll see a box titled “My Account” that lists the channels you have selected. Under the list is a button called “Create Channel.” Clicking that takes you to a page where you can type in a name and a location for the website you want to download. Sites that are heavily graphics-oriented may not display well on your Palm, but sites that are mostly text-oriented appear like magic on the Palm, with clickable links and pull-down menus that work. The formatting will be altered, of course, to squeeze the content into the much-smaller screen size of the Palm. But it works -- you can literally put the web in your pocket and take it with you.








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