Meeting #11
July 7th, 1999 | July 10th, 1999 |
AportisDoc (Mobile Edition), iSilo, TealDoc, RichReader, Mobile LinkDoc, QED, SmartDoc, Smoothy, and Qvadis Express Reader Pro (Beta)
Roy Caban, who joined our PUG only two months ago, has been transferred back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Roy will be leaving for Florida next month. All the best of luck in Florida Roy. It has been nice having you as a paying member of Canada's Premier PUG. Whoops! Did I actually type that? Roy has said that he will remain a newsletter member, so he won't be completely out of touch.
Karen Thompson was our first timer this month. She found out about the PUG on a bus. A GO bus that is. Seems that Karen sat by one of our other members, Bill MacKay. The Palm's came out, the conversation started ...and BANG we have a new member
...and so as the batteries drain and the data gets synced. These are the days of a PUG member.
TopicsAs usual the beginning of the meeting was an open forum for members to talk to each other and exchange ideas and experiences.
Our newest member, Karen Thompson an obvious power user, asked about ideas on getting scratches out of the alpha portion of the Graffiti area. One suggestion was using the CD scratch remover, which is a fine abrasive. The other was upgrading to a Palm IIIx. If anyone has other suggestions please let Karen know.
Sam Peralta, Russell Scheer and Kevin Maynard, Qvadis company founders, are preparing for Beta testing and have asked that interested parties contact them at beta@qvadis.com.
Then the demos.
AportisDoc isn't simply based on Rick Bram's DOC format. It is in fact Rick's DOC application with enhancements. Aportis acquired the DOC application and made some additions and renamed it AportisDoc.
AportisDoc has a 40k footprint and is the most expensive of the Doc readers that was reviewed. Not a good combination considering that it doesn't offer any real advantage over other readers, with the exception of "Virtual Wide Screen".
iSilo showed a 53k footprint on the demo machine, but the developer indicates that the footprint occupies less than 40k. The price of this app makes it quite luring. It has many features including a 20% smaller document format (proprietary) and a boastful 2 times speed increase.
During lunch Sam mentioned that a company has developed a series of brushed aluminum cases for the Palm III and IIIx. Check it out at Palmstation.
TealDoc has a 44k footprint and is reasonably priced. It has many features and is the only reader that was reviewed that supported graphics.
Apparently TealDoc does not use 3Com's O/S API's in the suggested manner and therefore problems could arise if 3Com changes the O/S.
Break time. For laughs we decided to review the 100 worst pickup lines. They have got to be some of the ... well you'll have to check them out for yourselves won't you.
RichReader has a 37k footprint and is among the lowest priced apps. that were reviewed. It was one of the favorite apps. during the meeting. It's support of the Rich Text Format (RTF) and the ability to rotate the screen were very popular. It was also the only apps. we reviewed that had these two features.
Mobile LinkDoc has a 28k footprint and is the most inexpensive of the readers that were reviewed. For the number of features offered we thought that the footprint was actually too large. It does have one feature that no other reader had. It has the ability to link between documents. Sean found Mobile LinkDoc a bit difficult to use and a few of the users agreed.
QED has a 26k footprint, but has the second most expensive price tag. QED was the first app. that enabled the Palm user to edit DOC file on the unit its self. Several of the members that have used the product did not find the onscreen icons to be very intuitive.
SmartDoc has the largest footprint 114k and a middle of the road price tag. It was the most fully featured of the readers reviewed and was one of the two that allows the user to edit DOC files on the Palm device. The size and lack of either HTML or RTF were SmartDocs biggest drawbacks.
Smoothy has a 36k footprint with a middle of the road price tag. It is the least featured reader that was reviewed, but has one big plus. The auto scrolling feature of this app. is unparalleled. Very very smooth and obviously were the name comes from.
Qvadis Express Reader Pro (Beta)
Qvadis Express Reader Pro is comprised of GT (the Palm app.) and DX (the Desktop app.) is the newest reader reviewed. So new in fact that it was demonstrated in a pre released version by one of Qvadis' owners, Sam Peralta. All three owners are members of Canada's Premier PUG. Sam as mentioned previously along with Russell Scheer and Kevin Maynard. This product promises to be very full featured and has the added advantage of a desk top application that no other reader has.
A couple of other Desktop packages were mentioned.
DocIt - Which is basically a GUI version of MakeDoc
Documents To Go - Which is a desktop application that allows you to transfer Microsoft Word and Excel documents onto your Palm.
Prizes
Of course there were prizes to be had. They were determined by means of a blind draw from the flower pot?.
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Thanks are due to all sponsors for their support of Canada's Premier PUG! Please visit their websites to see a collection of other impressive products to help you get the most out of your PalmPilot.
Respectfully,
Rob Bowen, Scribe Understudy, Canada's Premier PUG
Sean D. Evans, President, Canada’s Premier PUG