Web on the Go

Wireless Internet access costs money, but AvantGo's synchronized services put Web content into your hands for free.

AvantGo, launched in May 1999, supports Palms, Handspring Visors, Pocket PCs, and mobile phones. Its Mobile Internet service offers a wide variety of categories, such as business, city/regional, entertainment, news, portals, sci-tech, sports, travel, weather, and even wireless. And with this week's acquisition of Globalware, AvantGo users will be able to access Lotus Notes on a Palm.You don't even need a modem on your handheld, although AvantGo can support that, too. The trade-off for modemless Web access is that the Web information is synched and downloaded, then frozen on your handheld.

While you can use AvantGo on a wireless device that links live to the Internet, the service was designed to bring the Web to disconnected handhelds. But when Web content is stagnant, is it really the Web?

Pick Your Sites

In order to receive the synchronized Web, you first must sign up for the service and download AvantGo client software to your handheld via its desktop software. I tried AvantGo on a Palm OS-based Handspring Visor and found the initial download and synchronization through my Universal Serial Bus connection to be quick and efficient.

After the installation comes the fun part: picking the content. At AvantGo.com, you browse for sites by category or simply type in a particular site to see if there's an AvantGo version.

With more than 1000 channels available, you'll probably find the site you want or something similar. AvantGo.com also has editorial picks and a news channel bundle with news grabs from select AvantGo partners.

You can choose an unlimited number of sites, but memory and connection speeds will limit you.

Juggling Choices, Space

Handhelds don't have a lot of memory. To help you monitor your device resources, each channel at AvantGo.com tells you how much memory it uses. Fortunately, most use little memory.

Since most AvantGo sites run around 50KB, I was able to get a lot onto my 8MB Visor. If your handheld only has 2MB, you'll want to select the sites you want most first. And even with my Visor's USB connection, synchronizing is significantly slower with the five AvantGo sites I chose. Since Palms still come with serial cradles, you might want to test how long synchronization takes before selecting too many sites.

As a reporter, I first selected news channels such as Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and even our own PCWorld.com. Next, for fun instead of work, I hit sports.

Because so many AvantGo channels are available, you can find ones that cater to specific interests. In my case, I wanted hockey news so I selected The Sporting News: Hockey as well as Fox Sports for general sports updates.