Reviews

TomeRaider

February 15, 2002

Stay with me here- the hard part is getting started. Once you install TomeRaider on both your handheld and your PC, you have to configure everything just right to get it working. The PC side of things (where you convert your files for handheld use) is remarkably simple— just do your normal install thing and it’s ready to go. The same isn’t quite true on the Palm side of things, and it drove me nuts. Not everyone has had the same problems I did, but in case you do here’s your answer (assuming that you have a Palm m500 or m505 with an expansion card). I couldn’t seem to get TomeRaider to run on my device until a kind soul on one of the internet mailing lists clued me in to the fact that you can set the directory TomeRaider looks in to find all of its files. Once I set it to /Palm/TomeRaider, everything worked like a charm.

After you get everything installed, visit Memoware for a huge repository of TomeRaider files— all free! I picked up the IMDB, , the Complete Shakespeare, the Star Wars Encyclopedia, and a ton of great Bible references including Nave’s Topical Bible, Easton’s Bible Dictionary, Matthew Henry’s Commentary, and more. Use the desktop program to get all of the files you’ve found ready to use on the handheld— there’s a menu option for “Hotsync to Palm” that’s very easy to find. Check the box that tells the program to compile the file for SD card use, and you’re ready to go. Once you have several files converted you’ll find it much easier to use a card reader or SyncWizard software to install them to your expansion card. All Palm OS handhelds (along with Pocket PCs and Psions) can use the TomeRaider software, but some of the files are large enough that they can only be used on a card— it just depends on the type of information that you’re interested in.

And this program is FAST— no matter if I were accessing a 100K file or one as large as 7MB, information access was almost instantaneous. It’s obvious too that a lot of thought went into planning everything out— the on scren controls are intuitive, and the quick search function is truly amazing. And the dictionaries and encyclopedias can be complete hyperlinked, meaning that you can very quickly jump to related information with no trouble at all. As more and more files are converted to the TomeRaider format, especially large databases and technical references, this program will only grow in usefullness.

All in all I think that TomeRaider is an excellent solution to the need to access large amounts of information on handheld devices. I just wish that the documentation and online support were just a bit better. I was lucky enough to find my answers on the internet, and hopefully they’ll help others who might be having the same startup problems that I did. You can get TomeRaider for $20 (Palm OS) or $25 (Pocket PC) at the TomeRaider web site.

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