RepliGo is a document viewer application that lets you take a wide variety of document types and view them on your handheld. Supported formats include Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), PDF documents, web pages, Visio drawings, and more. Even better, several diffent platforms are supported, such as Palm OS, Pocket PC, Microsoft Smartphone, Nokia Series 60, the Sony Ericsson p800, and Microsoft Windows. All RepliGo documents are cross platform and will work on any device without any extra conversion.It must be noted that Version 2.0 is only for Palm OS 5 devices, Pocket PC, Microsoft Smartphones, and Windows– other platforms are restricted to 1.x versions of RepliGo until other upgrades are released.
So how does it all work? It’s quite simple, really. After downloading and installing the RepliGo software on a Windows desktop PC, you’ll see a short tutorial that explains how things work. That’s a nice touch, but RepliGo is so easy to use that there’s not much reason to read any instructions. When using Microsoft Word and/or Excel. you’ll see that a RepliGo button has been added to your toolbar. Simply open the document you want to convert, and click on the button. You can either accept the default settings by choosing “Convert Now” or you can use the preview feature that lets you set the orientation of the document, the size, etc. At the next HotSync, your document will be on your handheld.
Other document types require just a little more effort- instead of a RepliGo toolbar button, you’ll need to select the special RepliGo “print” driver. Simply start the document printing process as you normally would, but choose RepliGo instead of your usual print driver. The document is then converted for use on your handheld and as before, a simple synchronization transfers it to the device.
Of course simple conversion doesn’t mean a thing if the final product is hard to read. Fortunately RepliGo has made large strides forward in this regard. Version 1.0 was pretty good, but 2.0 simply blows the old RepliGo right out of the water. When you start the application on your handheld you’ll see a list of the files on your device. You can choose to see only files in RAM, on a memory card, or both. The menu options allow you to easily move files back and forth between RAM and card, set the card directory if desired, and put documents in categories. opening a file is as simple as tapping on the file name.
I was surprised by the lightning fast file opening on my Tapwave Zodiac. There was almost no delay at all. And every file I converted, be it a Microsoft Word or Excel file or a web page in Internet Explorer, looked very good. There are a number of icons at the bottom of the application, so I’ll explain each one in turn. In the top toolbar you’ll see a pair of binoculars for the search function– it is now possible to search for specific words in RepliGo documents, and that makes finding the information you need that much faster. The next icon allows you to find the same word again. The next icon is for the new bookmark function and shows a list of the bookmarks already made in the document. The sheet of paper with the starburst next to it is the button to use to make new bookmarks. Just to the right is the Comment button, which shows a list of the comments that have been attached to the document. Of course the button right next to it allows you to add comments as well. Finally, the last button on the right allows you to quickly change the orientation of the document from portrait to landscape.
The toolbar on the bottom controls how the document is displayed. The red X takes you to the main document list, and the left and right arrows turn green when you are able to go forward or backward, working much as you would expect in a web browser. The icon that looks like a full sheet of paper allows you to get a bird’s eye view of the document as a whole. That’s great for checking layout, but of course you won’t be able to read the text. The next button is really cool– it “reflows” the document to make it more readable. This is especially important with PDF documents that may tend to have columns, but it also worked well on web pages. The next box allows you to set the zoom level of the document, with varying choices from 10% to 300%.
The next tool is very important, since it allows you to choose between several different tools. Selections include the “Hand” (which allows you to quickly “grab” the document and scroll up, down, or across, the zoom tool, text selection, the highlighter, and the highlighter color. The zoom tool allows you to draw a box on the screen and enlarge just the text or graphics in that box for a better view. Next is a control that lets you quickly move from page to page in the document, and then to hide the upper toolbar if you want to clear off some screen space.
RepliGo has earned a permanent spot in my handheld arsenal. I test a great deal of software, and not every tool or application I write about can pass that test. RepliGo fills a real void for me because it makes keeping reference information on my handheld that much easier and more powerful. I sometimes have to print user manuals because I want to read them while on the road and they’re only available as PDFs– but not anymore. I need to keep several spreadsheets on my handheld as well, and before I typically would copy and paste the information between Excel and the Palm Desktop because I don’t really need to recalculate or edit the data on my handheld, just view it. RepliGo has simplfied that process immensely, without taking up a lot of space. The Palm OS viewer is under 500K, and most of the documents I’ve converted take up only 5-30K of RAM.
I highly recommend RepliGo to anyone who wants to keep lots of reference information in their handheld but doesn’t need to edit it– for that you would need Documents To Go or a similar application. The power of RepliGo is in its simplicity and the new version 2.0 has made some impressive improvements. The new bookmark, highlighting, and comment functions may be just enough to bridge the gap between mere viewing and the need to actually edit those documents. As you can see from my score I’m very pleased with the latest version, but if Cerience wants to earn one of my coveted “Perfect 10″ awards, they’ll need to do one thing– support other web browsers in the future. I use Mozilla Firefox myself, not Internet Explorer, and would like to be able to convert web pages without having to open a second browser just so that I can use IE, which RepliGo requires.
RepliGo viewers for a variety of handheld platforms are free, just download them from the web site. That’s good news for corporate users, who can very quickly distribute converted documents to a variety of cross-platform handheld users very quickly In order to convert files, you’ll need to purchase the full version, which is $29.95, or $14.95 for registered users of version 1.0. Check it out for yourself at the Cerience web site, and you just might find yourself leaving that heavy briefcase full of documents and file folders (and maybe even that laptop) at home on your next business trip!
PocketGoddess Rating for RepliGo 2.0: 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It doesn’t “require” IE, it just doesn’t have a plugin button. You can convert from Firefox by using the Print functionality.
You can use the Repligo driver to print the webpage in firefox or any page in other program.
i use firefox,the print function doesn’t work！