I can say with confidence that AvantGo is one of the applications for my Palm that I use most, even more than some of the basic programs that come preinstalled. (In fact, I'd say that the only program I use more is Memo Pad.) It's a fairly powerful Web browser, considering the limitations of the Palm platform, plus it's free, which always makes a program better.

AvantGo is a small Web browser that your Palm uses to browse the Web. It does so in one of two ways. Either you download Web pages wirelessly, or you have them downloaded to your Palm when you HotSync. I can't comment on the former, as my Palm has no wireless capability. The latter is extremely well done, however. You set up an account on their Web site (AvantGo.com), download and install their software, and then use the Web account to manage which Web sites you would like to have delivered to your Palm. This way, as long as you sync from a computer with the AvantGo software installed, you will still get your Web pages when you sync regardless of what computer you sync from. This does add to your sync time, and requires that the computer you sync with be connected to the Internet, obviously, but these are pretty minor inconveniences. (I should mention, however, that the connections I use are either Ethernet, at school, or cable modem, at home. If you're running off of a 28.8 modem, AvantGo could add significantly to your sync time because of the speed of the connection.)

As far as what Web pages AvantGo can handle, there are two basic types: AvantGo's "channels", and regular Web pages. Channels are specially formatted Web pages that are pretty much guaranteed to look right when viewed with AvantGo. You can find these by browsing through AvantGo's list of channels, and there are quite a few, including the New York Times, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, C|Net, the Weather Channel, and many other major publications. Adding these channels to your Palm is very simple; all you need to do is click "Add Channel" and, poof, it's there the next time you sync.

But what if there's a Web site that you read every day, and you want on your Palm, but there isn't a channel for it? No problem. AvantGo's site includes a utility that lets you make channels out of any Web page. Just type a name for the channel, the URL, give a maximum size for the channel, how deep you want to follow links (for example, do you follow no links, or all the links on the first page, or all the links on all of the pages the first page links to, and so on), how often to refresh it, and you're all set. It does take a bit of experimentation, of course, too see how big of a maximum size is big enough, and how many or how few links to follow, but that's something you can get the hang of fairly quickly.

The Palm application itself does an excellent job. When you first load it up, it gives you links to all of your channels, and you can return to this page at any time by clicking the Home icon in the upper left corner of the screen. You can also go back and forward, as well as reload (though that function is really only useful for wireless viewing). The pre-made channels are very clear and well organized, for the most part. Custom channels can be easy to view or not, depending on how the original page looks like. I've made channels that were very legible, and I've made some that took about a minute of scrolling down before I got to the actual content. That's not really AvantGo's fault, though; it does the best it can with the limited screen real estate that it can. In general, though, AvantGo's Web pages are easy to read and navigate.

The only thing I don't like about AvantGo is that it limits the amount of space it can occupy to 2 MB. Now, this is fine for smaller handhelds which have only 2 MB of space total. However, I have a Palm Vx, with 8 MB of memory, and most of that is not being used. Why can't I decide to use up more than 2 MB on my handheld if I want to? This isn't a major thing, but it is a minor quibble I have with AvantGo.

All in all, AvantGo is the way to go if you want to view Web pages on your Palm. I've tried other Palm browsers, and AvantGo is be far the simplest and best designed Web browser for PalmOS, plus, it's completely free. It may have some minor problems, but AvantGo is really the best choice that's currently available for handheld Web browsing.






Recommended: Yes