Comments on: Quickies: Express Reader, Quickoffice, Giveaway, Desktop Bug

Qvadis has released Qvadis Express Reader GT 2.10. This replaces the line-by-line scrolling with a smooth autoscroll with adjustable speed, introduces new linespace options for ease of viewing, brings in new color buttons, streamlines the preference menus, and optimizes tap routines to minimize the number of taps users need to get to particular functions. The update is free for registered users of GT. -Qvadis

Cutting Edge Software is offering an upgrade promotion for users of the Palm m500 and m505 to encourage them to switch from the document viewing software which came bundled with the devices to the Quickoffice suite. For a limited time, users of Palm m500 series handhelds will be able to upgrade to Quickoffice for only $30, a savings of 25%. -Kevin

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Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 7:37:20 AM #

I own Quick Office and WordSmith, as well as the Documents To Go stuff that came with my m505. Personally, I think every Doc reader software developer out there is chasing Word Smith at this point. I stopped using Quick Office, and I haven't found a use for Docs To Go. Just a personal observation.

JBH

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 7:52:26 AM #

The only thing about Wordsmith I don't like is memory. Not the program size, but how much memory you need free to open large documents. A 400k document needs almost a meg free to view. Quickword, on the other hand, needs much less memory to open documents.

RE: Quick Office

Wilson @ 7/10/2001 7:59:13 AM #

While I agree wholeheartedly with your comment on doc usage size, I just want to comment on FineType in the new WS 2.0....

This IS the definitive PDA word processor on the market now. IMO, nothing compares. FineType on the 505 makes your editor / reader better than anything on a PocketPC machine or Palm OS! Bar none.

I will live with the ram usage for this!

It's like printed paper.

Until the Palm OS supports this across the board, and makes FineType technology part of the OS, the other developers aren't just chasing WordSmith, they've been left in the dust! Big time!

And I also am a registered user of WS, QuickDocs/SmartDocs, and Documents to go.

I miss the footprint of SmartDocs and especially CspotRun, but the FineType and real word processing ability is just too much to pass up.

WordSmith 2.0 is unbelievable!

Dwayne Wilson

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 8:23:36 AM #

I have been a registered user of Documents To Go since 1999 and continue to use it frequently. In later versions, do have the avility to edit (and sync) Word and Excel documents on your Palm --- however, I normally do not make any changes. I prefer D2G over all others for a couple of reasons:

1. It's modular. P2G is comprised of 5 small applications, instead of one large one. Depending on what you want to do with it, you install or do not install a component.

2. DOC support. Install WordView and you have the ability to view Palm DOC files. The downside? DOC files are read-only.

3. PDF support. Part of the Add-on kit which is free for anyone who purchased D2G and $20 for m505 users who installed the "bundled" version. Again, read-only and does not support graphics, but I do not have to install Adobe's Acroread for PalmOS.

4. Dataviz has excellent support. I can't speak about the other support teams, but I can say Dataviz rocks my world.

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 8:58:11 AM #

I also am a D2G fan. I like Wordsmith but it has two major problems that make it unacceptable to me. First, (as mentioned above) the memory usage is killer. The amount of memory it requires to open a document is prohibitive. Second, I use WordPerfect as my primary word processor and have no intention of making Word my primary word processor. The lack of native support for WordPerfect is a real drawback for me. The support for rich text format is not enough and is too much of a pain. The combination of these two make Wordsmith unable to suit my needs.

YMMV.

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 9:09:55 AM #

To the guy who commented about 5 small apps vs one big one... HUH??? are you kidding? 650k for 5 small apps?

From memory Quickoffice is 3 small apps and a plugin to the total of 350k

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 11:00:03 AM #

Depending on what you want to do with it, you install or do not install a component.

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 11:55:16 AM #

While it is true that WordSmith requires more memory to open a document, it's rich text documents are significantly smaller than those created by Documents To Go. So, at the end of the day, the memory requirements are essentially the same, except for the PRC size.

RE: Quick Office

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/10/2001 5:24:50 PM #

Where can I WS 2? I have looked on Palmgear, Handango and Blue Nomad's own site and all they have is 1.X versions...

RE: Quick Office

Ed @ 7/10/2001 5:43:42 PM #

While Blue Nomad showed a beta of Wordsmith 2.0 off at the TECHXNY, the final version is not yet available.

---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter

Document size

altema @ 7/10/2001 8:19:25 PM #

What are you folks reading that takes up 400k... War and Peace? A good sized novel (1 inch thick in paperback) takes up 248k in WordSmith. The entire constitution of the United States is 15k. I agree that memory space is important, but you can only have one e-book open at a time. DataViz makes some great products, I own some of them myself. However, D2G and WS fill two different needs: one is a for viewing and adjusting various documents, the other is a full blown wordprocessor. You can't force someone, who only needs to adjust various documents, to pay the RAM penalty for dozens of funtions they'll never use. You also should not look down on someone who does need a real word processor. It was a tough choice for me, so I compromised and used JackFlash to put WordSmith into flash where it runs beautifully. It was the first time I bought an app just to accomodate another app, but it was well worth every dime.

RE: Document size

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2001 12:29:35 AM #

Overall, I've found Docs to Go to be a very good product that provides a consistant way to handle multiple document types. It's tough to compare it to WordSmith because it provides more than just word processing. I use it for spreadsheets and find the ability to synchronize email attachments to be one of its strongest points few people talk about on this site.

WordSmith does provide additional formatting capabilities on the Palm, but I found I rarely changed font size, paragraph, etc. And any changes I did make affected stuff in my original Word document.

Dataviz's latest D2G free upgrade now synches back changes and my Word doc doesn't lose anything. To me, that's more important than extra editing features on the Palm, but I'm curious as to what WordSmith users have to say about that.

As for the size issue, I've found the D2G file sizes to be roughly the same or smaller than WordSmith (uncompressed) or QuickOffice. And it seems D2G does not need to create "work files" in order for me to open and edit my documents.

This is especially noticable with QuickSheet spreadsheets which when I tried it could take a minute or more to open and required 3-4 times the amount of memory available than the file size was on my Palm (got a message my 300k file required 1200k additional space). Am I doing something wrong? D2G made the same spreadsheet 120k and it opened instantly. It was basically a list of about 800 names and addresses.

QuickWord was of no use to me because it blew away all formatting in my Word doc.

RE: Document size

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2001 12:36:43 AM #

The constitution is rather short, maybe 15 pages or so.

RE: Document size

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2001 3:12:00 AM #

no WONDER your constitution needed so many amendments... 8-)

RE: Document size

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2001 9:53:01 AM #

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote most of the Constitution, was one of the great Libertarians of all time. He believed "That government is best which governs least". This explains why the Constitution is such a minimalist document. He'd be horrified by the U.S. Government today but it is the nature of bureaucracies to grow and grow until the whole system gets knocked down and they have to start over again.

I know this is way off topic but did you know that one of the worst things to ever happen to the U.S. was the invention of air conditioning? Until then, no one wanted to be in Washington D.C. unless they absolutely had to. The city is on what used to be a swamp. Military units assigned to Washington got hazard pay because the risk of Malaria was so high. This kept the central government small and weak. But when A/C was invented, the central bureaucracy began to grow, and grow, and grow because people were suddenly comfortable.

-Mike M.

RE: Document size

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2001 10:52:38 AM #

D2G is not a word processor. MiniCalc does not have the open delay problems of Quicksheet.

Doc 2 Go & tables

Mark Roberts @ 7/11/2001 9:17:08 AM #

I have tried Quick Office: Docs 2 Go & Wordsmith. As I need to work with tables I had to usg Docs 2 go

Quickoffice VFS support???

ganoe @ 7/11/2001 2:16:45 PM #

I received Quickoffice with my HandEra 330 and it's pretty nice. It supports the 330's resolution and screen rotation. It is also set up nicely to integrate with other applications. Now they're pushing it to m50x users. Still, it doesn't (from what I can tell) support reading plain text or document files from MMC/SD/CF via VFS. That's the feature I want.