by Don Engstrom

In the past several years PDA's, or Personal Digital Assistants for the uninitiated, have quietly infiltrated the lives of millions of Mac users. Having your calendar, to-do list and contacts (not to mention the odd game or two) all together in one device is undeniably handy. Documents to Go from DataViz aims to extend the usefulness of your Palm OS device by allowing you to synchronize text documents and spreadsheets from your Mac to your handheld device.

Setup: Documents to Go consists of three components; the desktop application (pictured below) which you use to select documents for synchronization, a conduit to allow the synchronization to take place, and Palm applications for viewing your documents.

Desktop Application - There are two methods for adding documents via the desktop application. If the document is in an open window, simply drag it to the DTG window. Alternately you can click on the "Add" button to navigate to the document you want. Documents are translated to a format viewable on your PDA. If you try to add a file that is not supported, a PDF file for example, you will get a message stating that the file is not currently supported along with an e-mail address for requesting future support, a nice touch. DataViz recently announced that they will be adding support for PDF files wish will be a welcome addition. The desktop application also provides useful information on each document including: size, category and whether it is more current than the version on your PDA.

Palm Applications - There are currently three applications for viewing your documents. WordView lets you view documents in the popular "Doc" format. WordView+ lets you view formatted text (bold, italics, underlined, justified, etc) as well as documents with embedded tables. SheetView, as you may have guessed, lets you view spreadsheets. All three programs make moving around easy with navigation arrows, search functions and the ability to add bookmarks for quick access later. You can also beam your documents to other handheld devices along with the appropriate viewer application if the recipient device doesn't have DTG installed.

Conclusions: We tested Documents to Go with a variety AppleWorks (5) spreadsheets and word processing documents as well as a few SimpleText ReadMe files. In all cases the documents were reproduced faithfully on our PDA's screen. Beaming a spreadsheet along with the SheetView application to a PDA without DTG worked flawlessly as well. DataViz has done a bang up job with Documents To Go especially given the confines of small screen on PDA's. Navigation is easy in all three handheld applications thanks to the built in search and bookmarking functions. My only complaint is that DTG doesn't allow you to edit documents on the handheld but according to the DataViz web site this is planned for a future release. Anyone that needs to have spreadsheet or word processing documents available on the road will find this a valuable addition to their PDA. We look forward to PDF support in the future.

Product: Documents to Go, version 2.005
Company: DataViz
Hits: Excellent reproduction of desktop documents, good navigation tools, can beam documents & viewer to PDA's that don't have DTG installed. PDF support in the works.
Misses: Can't edit documents on handheld, no support for databases.
Rating: (5 possible)
Minimum Requirements: Power Mac OS 7.6 or newer 8MB RAM, 8MB drive space Palm OS 2.0 or newer MacPac 2, HotSync Manager 2.1	Supported Applications: Word 6, 8 (98) ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 4,5 (word processing) Text Excel 5, 8 (98) ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 4,5 (spreadsheet)