By Bill Mann
If you're like me, you carry your handheld wherever you go. My handheld is my taskmaster, auxiliary memory, and address book, all in one. In the old days, when it came to heavy-duty tasks like working with spreadsheets, viewing PDF files, or writing magazine articles, I had to wait until I got back to my office. With Handango Office Suite Platinum Edition from http://www.handango.com, I don't have to wait any longer.
The Office Suite consists of eight applications that add power and flexibility to your handheld. The eight components of the Office Suite are:
- WordSmith for portable documents;
- TinySheet for spreadsheets;
- BigClock as a Clock replacement;
- Adobe Acrobat Reader as a PDF viewer;
- HanDBase for databases;
- powerOne Personal as a replacement Calculator;
- PalmPrint for printing;
- Launch 'Em, an application Launcher.
You should note that Handango also offers Gold and Silver editions of the suite. These editions include fewer applications than the Platinum edition. PalmPrint is only in the Platinum edition. HanDBase, powerOne Personal, and Launch 'Em are part of the Gold and Platinum editions.
Be aware that the Handango Office Suites are not like the Microsoft Office suites. Each version of Microsoft Office is an integrated suite, where the applications can all interact with one another. For example, you can embed an Excel spreadsheet in your Word document, or use Word as Outlook's email editor.
The applications in the Handango Office Suites are not integrated. While they all help you perform common office tasks with your Palm OS handheld, you can't do things like embed a TinySheet spreadsheet in a WordSmith document.
Downloading the Office Suite
The Office Suite is available at the Handango Web site (at http://www.handango.com). Unfortunately, Handango sells so many products that it can be hard to find the one you're looking for. If the link above doesn't work, the best way to find the Office Suite is to go to the Palm OS section of Handango.com, and search for "Office Suite". Include the quotation marks around the words Office Suite, or you'll get over one hundred hits.
Once you find the Office Suite, click the Add to Cart button on the page and follow the usual steps to make the purchase. The Handango Office Suite Platinum Edition costs $99.95, so have your credit card ready. The Office Suite comes as a very large file (about 18 MB) that will take over two hours to download with a 56K modem. Make sure you can devote around three hours to the download.
