.KEYWORD dtgpro
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE PalmPower reviews Documents To Go 4.0
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Can you really leave your laptop at home? What if you need Word, Excel, and the other features of Microsoft Office? Documents To Go is, in the opinion of our tough reviewer, the most fully featured "Office" suite available for the Palm OS platform, and even rivals the Pocket Office applications on the Pocket PC platform. Read this important article by Jen Edwards to find out how you can take your office on the go.
.AUTHOR Jen Edwards
If you’ve recently purchased an m500 or m505 Palm handheld, you may already be familiar with Documents To Go, which was included on a software CD in the package.
You may not, however, be familiar with the latest release from DataViz, Documents To Go 4.0, Professional Edition. In addition to allowing you to view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents on your handheld, you now have the ability to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and even read Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format) files. It’s obvious that this product is a large step forward in corporate handheld computing.
.CALLOUT It’s obvious that this product is a large step forward in corporate handheld computing.
.H1 Installation
Installation is rather straightforward. Once you follow the necessary steps on your desktop PC, HotSync your Palm OS handheld in order to copy the Documents To Go applications to your device. A full installation will take require approximately 800K of free memory on your device. While several new icons will be added to your program launcher, the only one you need to use is the Documents icon. Tap on that, and you’ll see a listing of every Documents To Go file on your Palm, including documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations, as seen in Figure A.
.FIG A The Documents application on the handheld allows you to see exactly what has been installed to your device.
A couple of sample files were initially installed so that you can familiarize yourself with how the various handheld applications work, or you can use the desktop conduit to add your own files.
.H1 Using the desktop file manager
Fortunately the desktop file manager is very easy to use. Whether you have memos, sales projections, inventory spreadsheets, or important presentations that you would like to add to your handheld, it’s a simple matter to do so.
When Documents To Go was first installed on your computer, it added its own icon to the desktop. Double-click to activate the program, and then click the "Add Item" icon on the left-hand side, as shown below in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B The Documents To Go conduit manager on the desktop is very easy to use.
From there a box pops up that allows you to navigate anywhere on your computer and select the file that you would like to download and access on your handheld device. Even better, once you have chosen the file you want to add, it appears in the box along with information about the amount of room that will be required on the handheld and its status, such as "Needs sync" or "Current."
This same interface also allows you to delete files that you no longer wish to carry on your Palm OS device, to move files, and to categorize them. This is a very important feature if you would like to organize all of your documents by client, department, or the like.
Next you’ll find a Details button which can provide a great deal of information about each file, including its path, type, last modification date, the amount of room it takes up on your handheld device, the last time it was viewed, and its category. The last button is your gateway to the extensive Help features provided with Documents To Go.
.H1 Word To Go
Now that you know how to add your files, it’s time to start looking at the applications available on the handheld device itself. I’ll start with Word To Go, which is the word processing application in this suite. It’s come a long way since the first release, which only allowed you to view Microsoft Word files on your device, not edit them. Now full color support is provided, along with the ability to add bold, italic, and underlining formats to your text. These functions are accessed through the handy toolbar at the top of the application’s screen, as shown below in Figure C.
.FIG C The toolbar in Word To Go provides quick access to commonly-used features.
There is another toolbar just to the right that allows you to choose which type of alignment you would like for your text: left, centered, or right justified.
That’s not the end of the features either-Documents To Go is the only Palm word processor that handles tables as you would expect, allowing you to both view and edit the data without losing any formatting. This same feature has also been promised in the new version of QuickWord, from Cutting Edge Software.
You’ll find advanced color support, which allows you to see your documents in exactly the same way as you created them on the desktop, assuming of course that you have a Palm OS device with a color screen. You can choose from a rather large palette of colors. Bookmarks are a very welcome addition, and can be either added or navigated to using the pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen.
Indentation is also supported, which makes it easier to organize your notes in an outline-style format. Perhaps the best new feature though is the VFS (Virtual File System) support for Palm m500 series and Sony CLIE owners. Corporate documents and spreadsheets can be quite large, and being able to store them on a memory card instead of main memory is quickly becoming a necessity.
I was a bit disappointed though at the lack of Stowaway keyboard support. While it is possible to perform cut, copy, and paste functions with various key combinations, I could not find a way to select text and change the color, apply bold formatting, or indent the text without using the stylus. I would also like to see support for other fonts in the future, just as WordSmith currently offers with its FineType technology.
.CALLOUT Sheet To Go, the spreadsheet portion of Documents To Go, is simply outstanding.
Word To Go does an excellent job of allowing you to see your documents on your handheld and your desktop, so it makes sense to add the ability to see your work in Arial, Times New Roman, or any other font that you choose. With that said though, Word To Go has made remarkable strides in a fairly short time, and I look forward to seeing what is planned in future releases.
.H1 Sheet To Go
Sheet To Go, the spreadsheet portion of Documents To Go, is simply outstanding for several reasons. The first thing I noticed was that it has better compression than some of the other Palm OS spreadsheet products currently available, as all of my test documents were on the order of 10K smaller in Sheet To Go. This may not seem like a very large difference, but it can certainly add up if you need to keep several large spreadsheets accessible on your handheld.
The second thing that I noticed is that Sheet To Go is lightning fast. I was amazed at how quickly it was able to open each of my sample documents. I have to wait several infuriating seconds with some other products, but the file open process was almost instantaneous with Sheet To Go.
As seen in Figure D, it is remarkably easy to add and edit functions in Sheet To Go, a substantial improvement over the first version, which only allowed you to recalculate totals based on pre-existing functions.
.FIG D Sheet To Go is an excellent program that’s easy to use. Now you can negotiate big deals on the golf course, all the while keeping track of your most important stats.
In this latest release, it’s possible to perform almost any calculation you can think of, which makes it much simpler to update sales projections (or pretty much anything else) on the road when necessary. You can insert rows, columns, even entire worksheets, and the formatting options are also rather good.
It’s possible to lock individual cells, in order to avoid accidentally changing important information. You can choose left, center, or right alignment, insert bold text, and change both the cell and text color if you so desire. There are a number of different number formats to choose from as well, including general, fixed, scientific, currency, percent, text, date, and time, just as you would expect from Microsoft Excel on your desktop.
I honestly couldn’t find any shortcomings in Sheet To Go, though that could be because I typically don’t use spreadsheets that are very complicated or make use of some of the more advanced functions available in Microsoft Excel. I can say though that it is much faster than any other Palm OS spreadsheet that I have used, that it is very easy to navigate and use, and that it includes a wide range of functions (a total of 110) that will most likely serve all of your needs. It also works with both Quattro Pro and Lotus 1-2-3, in addition to Microsoft Excel.
.CALLOUT Slideshow To Go is the newest addition to the Documents To Go arsenal, and it is quite impressive.
.H1 Slideshow To Go
Slideshow To Go is the newest addition to the Documents To Go arsenal, and it is quite impressive. I’ve never seen anything quite like it for the Palm OS platform, though there are some other PowerPoint viewing programs available. In effect, it does everything that you could possibly want, except of course that you cannot actually edit slides on the handheld device.
There are three different views available: slide text, the actual slide (both the whole slide and detail views) and note view. As you can see below, you really can carry an entire PowerPoint presentation on your Palm handheld. Let’s first take a look at the slide text, as shown in Figure E.
.FIG E The outline view lets you quickly review all of the text on your PowerPoint slides.
Of course, you’re going to want to be able to look at the slide itself, as shown in Figure F.
.FIG F You can view each slide in its entirety.
There will be times when it’s better to see more detail. This, too, is possible with Slideshow To Go, as Figure G so ably demonstrates.
.FIG G You can tap on the plus sign at the bottom of the screen in order to get a more detailed view.
Even the best pitchman needs a good script. If you’ve created notes in your PowerPoint presentation, you’ll be able to see them on your Palm handheld, as shown in Figure H.
.FIG H The Notes view allows you to review the speaker’s notes you have attached to each slide.
Even if your presentation is very large, with complicated graphics, Slideshow to Go sports excellent compression. My test presentation was 941K on the desktop, but only 410K on the Palm.
The missing feature I’d like to see is a time delay slideshow function, so that I can quickly review an entire presentation or show it to a colleague without having to press the scroll buttons on my handheld.
.CALLOUT Documents To Go is, in my opinion, the most fully featured "Office" suite available for the Palm OS platform, and even rivals the Pocket Office applications on the Pocket PC platform.
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.H1 Final thoughts
Documents To Go is, in my opinion, the most fully featured "Office" suite available for the Palm OS platform, and even rivals the Pocket Office applications on the Pocket PC platform.
While WordSmith may be a better word processing option for those who make extensive use of a Stowaway keyboard due to its stronger implementation of keyboard shortcuts, Word To Go is certainly a strong competitor. If you need to view and edit tables or need exceptional color support, Word To Go is most likely your best option. Both Sheet To Go and Slideshow To Go are exceptional products, and would certainly make excellent additions to your handheld arsenal. While there are several other spreadsheet options available, there is nothing else that rivals the functionality of SlideShow To Go. And the advantage to using Documents To Go for everything is the fact that it is an integrated solution. One conduit and one very easy to use desktop solution can help you keep all of your business documents organized and synchronized.
Documents To Go Professional is available from Dataviz for $69.95, though there are several special offers available. If you have recently purchased a Palm m500 series device, it is possible to upgrade to the Professional version for free or up to $29.95, depending on how long ago you purchased the device. Documents To Go Professional is one of the best and most reasonably-priced reasons yet to leave that laptop at home on your next business trip.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Documents To Go, visit http://www.dataviz.com.
For more information on WordSmith, visit http://www.bluenomad.com/ws/prod_wordsmith_details.html.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
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.BIO
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