Product Review:
Information Appliance Associates' PocketMac Pro Utility
By Mitchell Levine
Like most PDA users, I love the technology, but can't stand
the inconvenience of a PocketPC-style PDA's incompatibility
with the Macintosh network that powers Education Update. True,
it's much more practicable than carrying a Rolodex, laptop,
portable library, scientific calculator, and, if you're like
me, Game Boy. On the other hand, a Windows-based laptop or
notebook isn't always available to keep a Compaq handheld synced
with the documents and databases I often need to interface.
And, since, although PCs have made some inroads into our institutions
of learning, education is still very much Apple's market, most
schools are equally vulnerable to this limitation
In fact, to schools following the
model of Smithtown, New York, and equipping all of their
students with PocketPCs, this "minor
irritation" become a formidable obstacle to IT deployment,
severely handicapping the system with cross-platform issues.
That spoils what would seem to be a natural combination, as
Pocket PCs are really in many ways complementary to the Mac:
they offer superb multimedia, graphics, and extensive third-party
software.
However, the release of PocketMac Pro has created an outstanding
development in this regard. Thanks to Information Appliance
Associates' application, a wide variety of Pocket PC devices,
including many brands of convergent cell/PDAs, can work directly
with any Macintosh computer running OS X, Panther or Jaguar
version, without even installing any new software on your PDA.
Popular utilities and document formats like Entourage, iCal
calendar, MS Word and Excel, Mail.app and Now Software's Now
Contact can run and be synchronized on any Pocket PC with the
program installed. Even better, for those that need or would
appreciate multi-platform access, with PocketMac Pro edition,
a Pocket PC can be used with either Windows or Mac OS-based
systems.
Best of all, PocketMac Pro, as the
manufacturer notes, only costs about 19% of the purchase
price of a new PDA, even before any potentially applicable
education discounts. The latest version of the software additionally
includes the company's well-known RegKing application, which
offers considerable performance enhancements for PocketPC
graphics and web browsing.
Unlike corporate buyers with budgets to buy all the latest
and greatest hardware they want or need, school systems need
to make every piece of equipment they own work with every other
piece. For those districts taking advantage of the many benefits
of the Pocket PC medium, investigating PocketMac Pro at the
company's site, www.pocketmac.net, will
be well worth the investment of time.#
