for web addicts!
Written: Jul 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: you can read the web without paying for a modem or wireless service!
Cons: takes up a LOT of memory
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| that's Full Review: Avantgo |
It was very exciting to get my palm IIIe, I thought that I would use it a lot and get a lot of out it. But after a week of not really touching it, I thought I really wasted my money this time (mind you that I’m just a student now and please don’t take my comment against the palm products). There wasn’t anything wrong with the palm, it did everything that it was supposed to do, but there seemed to have little for me to put into it at the time (during the summer while I’m not in school). As a result I was thinking of returning it and getting a new gadget to play with. But I decided instead to look for more software to put on my pda. Looking through epinion’s assortment of software there was quite a few to chose from that many people were recommending. I decided on trying out a sketch program (please see my other reviews on the sketch programs) as well as Avantgo. I had originally just wanted a sketch program, but after reading all the great reviews on Avantgo I couldn’t resist not trying it out.
This program is great. Anyone who owns a palm should try out this service. You may never think you’d need it but in the end you will realize you do.
What is it?
Avantgo is a program that downloads pages that you request to your palm so that you can read it whenever you want, wherever you want. Most people (I noticed) went to cnn, or fox news or the New York Times to download. Of course there are some other great pages that are helpful when you’re away from your computer such as weather.com or movie listings. Just think of the pages that you would normally go to and those would most likely be the pages that you would put onto your palm.
The Good
I never though that I would get a modem or a palm VII since I knew that I would never use it to the point where the cost would make sense. So I got the palm IIIe and figured I would use it to get organized and never thought to use it with web browsing. Well I was wrong.
Avantgo is great. It was an easy download, easy to set up, very clear online instructions that felt like someone was holding your hand the whole way through. I thought that this was a nice touch since I really had no idea how it would communicate with my computer’s palm software.
Anything you want you can get. Initially they start you off with what you chose from your interests that you check off on installation. I got a sony site, yahoo, fox news, another news site and some other things I don’t even remember anymore. If you look through the pages and realize that you really don’t want them then they are easily deleted.
There are no graphics, obviously because of the memory limitations that the palm has. Having only two mgs on my IIIe really limited me. I didn’t want to have memory problems so I decided only to download what I needed. The sites that Avantgo suggests are made for their program and there are simpler graphics for these pages. Like yahoo’s categories have small icons next to their text. I’m quite glad that there are no complex graphics. For one, the download time is already long, I would hate to see how long it would be if it included graphics.
Generally this is what I wanted in a palm web interaction. Unless it gets cheaper to use a wireless web, then this is quite fine. Sure I can’t go around all day long and rate epinions but I can read the most current news in my area without having to buy a newspaper! Too bad there’s no comics though!
The Bad
As mentioned before the download time is long. I was watching it when I first used the program and saw it was receiving 180+ pages off the web! I couldn’t believe it. The next thing I thought was….
How much memory is this thing going to take? Well, it took up 556K just for Avantgo (which included the web pages), but Avantgo needs smaller applications to run that take up 120K for one and 18K for the other. I tried deleting these, but it doesn’t work like that. Can’t say I didn’t try though!
Avantgo uses advertisers as well. But they are just one link on the home page that you can totally ignore. The reason why I put it in the bad section is because I have a feeling that a large part of the 556K might be because of these pages. And since I only have 2 mgs I think that it hurts me.
If I start using more of my palm for other software and I start to really lose a lot of memory this is going to be one of the first apps that will have to go since it’s just so huge! Sad, but true.
Besides that I can’t really think of anything else wrong with it, but if I do find more then I’ll be sure to update this epinion.
Overall I think this is a great program and I think everyone should try it out to see how they like it. It is a great link for your pda to get to the web and I think as a constant web surfer, this will really hit off.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
that
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Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 43 members
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