AvantGo Beta Overview
Nov 25, 2004 10:51 AM Filed in: PDA
One of the biggest uses I get from my PDA is reading web content offline. That is, I have a program that converts a website to a more small screen friendly version. The first program I know of to do this is AvantGo, I used them for several years. But as Palms advanced with higher resolutions Avantgo did not. I eventually switched to iSilo which was very similar but had different capabilities. Avantgo has come out with a newer version that addresses it's shortcoming.
The latest beta of AvantGo address the two biggest short coming of the program. First it support hi res 320x480 screens. Second it supports having the content on external media cards, like SD cards. One thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if the old version had this, is a full screen mode. If you press the little widget in the lower right had of the screen the menu bar will go away.
The latest beta of AvantGo address the two biggest short coming of the program. First it support hi res 320x480 screens. Second it supports having the content on external media cards, like SD cards. One thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if the old version had this, is a full screen mode. If you press the little widget in the lower right had of the screen the menu bar will go away.
I sync my Palm with both a PC at work and my Mac at home. So I pretty much don't use any apps that don't work on both platforms. Avantgo does, sort of, work on both platforms. Avantgo provides the conduit software for PCs but not for the Mac. To sync with a mac you need to download the open source MAL conduit. It doesn't provide a lot of configuration but it works without a hitch so far.
I was happy to see that the username I set up many years ago was still there. So set up was very easy and straight forward, just as it had been in the past. It still had several of the websites I had set up.
I was happy to see that the username I set up many years ago was still there. So set up was very easy and straight forward, just as it had been in the past. It still had several of the websites I had set up.
Websites have so far displayed liked I would expected. I noticed ads placed here and there throughout the program, and I wonder if those are placed by the sites themselves or placed by AvantGo. I wonder that because in many cases I grab the very same sites through iSilo and haven't see the ads.
AvantGo has the advantage of downloading the website whenever you sync, whereas iSilo downloads them on a schedule or manually in the background. iSilo also takes longer to convert a website and doesn't always do a good job at it.
The free account with Avantgo is limited to 2MB of space. I've already filled mine with 1.8MB that consist of 21 sites. You can upgrade your Avantgo space limitations to 8MB for $15 a year. iSilo has no space limitations and costs $20 with an upgrade cost with each major version.