Product Reviews

A huge number of Pocket PC owners are ex-Palm users, many of whom would still like to be able to run a few favourite Palm applications that haven't yet been ported to the Windows Mobile platform. StyleTap is a Palm OS emulator that allows you to do exactly that, running native Palm programs and files directly on your Pocket PC.

As with all emulators, it's not quite as good as the real thing. Processor-intensive applications, particularly games, can be sluggish under StyleTap, sometimes to the point of being unusable. Some utility programs that access the operating system at a low level either refuse to work or crash the system, requiring a soft reset. However, at least 90

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per cent of the Palm applications we tried worked OK. You can assign a Palm Username to the virtual device, so it's possible to register most of your Palm programs successfully. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for those that tie themselves to a particular device ID.

Data exchange between the two PDA environments is accomplished via a common clipboard. This allows you to copy and paste text freely from Palm to Pocket PC, and vice versa. Palm applications can be launched via StyleTap's own launcher, but they also appear in the standard Pocket PC Applications list and Start Menu. This is a lovely touch that makes it just as quick and easy to run a Palm application as it is to run a Pocket PC one.

StyleTap displays in low-resolution (160x160 pixels) Palm mode only and resizes this to fit the 240 pixel-wide Pocket PC screen, so text and graphics look clunky. Still, everything is readable. Most standard Palm OS functions are present, including the Command Bar and global Find tool, though hacks and conduits aren't supported.

This is an ambitious product with some understandable limitations. But if it works with your particular mix of Palm software, which you can check using the 15-day evaluation version, then you'll probably find it indispensable.