mcaren

Am new to PDAs -- are there risks associated w/downloading Palm freeware (pda equiv. to spyware, etc.)? [I can understand why some pc freeware companies offer stuff -- esp. when they add things to your machine w/o your knowledge -- but why would palm freeware developers be so generous?] thanks. mcaren

05Edge

Some people just like to share. Some is a way to get people to look into their other utilities, and some just believe in the open source movement. I've never had any malicious freeware that I know of, but I've only been a Palm user for about 4 months now, and I don't download everything out there.... just what I think I'll like.

Dick Tracy

Almost all of the palm freeware is without any malicious code. You have no need to purchase screensavers, anti virus suites or the like. A reliable source of freeware is palmgear.com where there are user reviews and ratings. Another good source is freewarepalm.com (make sure you have a popup blocker on for this site).

You did not mention which model of PDA you have. The newer Palms have OS5.4 which has NVFS. Some of the older applications are not compatible. There are compatibility lists for many newer models at palmfocus.com.

If you have a doubt about a particular application, you are welcome to ask about it here as well.

Happy software hunting.

mcaren

I steal his constantly. Am looking for a cheaper model myself, but haven't decided on one yet. I am more of a geek than he is, so I'm usually the one adding apps. Paid for Bejeweled, but would like to refrain from spending more (esp. for games). Thanks for the info.

_Em

I think someone around here created a list of "must have" free software for recent Palm devices... it might have been in either the TX or LifeDrive section. HMaki and SMBMate are good places to start

__________________
My Palm family:
Palm T|X ~ Palm T|E ~ m130 ~ m125 ~ POSE

Cygnet

A couple of things I would add are,

a) Generally freeware as stated above is OK people like to share.... but very occasionally you will find an application that your Palm will take exception too or the app will take an exception to your Palm leaving you in a Hard reset situation or with corruption of dbs (this happened to me with perhaps some slightly more esoteric hacks / da ) so my second piece of advice would be

b) backup to PC (or MAC) regularly or even better (particularly if 'borrowing' the hubbys palm ) is to install a backup program, I can personally recommend resco-backup but there are a few others... a comment then can start a thread on its own.
backup up prior to installing 'iffy' freeware and restore if it all goes pearshaped and nobody is none the wiser.

Lastly I have read of Palm viruses / trojans but I am convinced that this is scare tactics either by a certain other large software vendor with inferior, slower 'multitasking' products (yet another thread on its own) or by software vendors trying to sell the lastest 'security software'

HTH

SC

Dick Tracy

Get a TX. The Z22 with low-res and no SD will not satisfy a geek. The E2 has some issues and you really want WiFi .

If you act fast, a great deal can be had at OfficeDepot, details here.

_Em

Plus, there's a guy who sells for low, low prices on eBay... there are a few threads about it (Dmitry tends to find the links) on here.

__________________
My Palm family:
Palm T|X ~ Palm T|E ~ m130 ~ m125 ~ POSE

kiteandcamera

Cygnet makes two very good points. I emphasize that you make a habit of backing up your handheld data. If you test beta apps, there vould be bugs that would cause you to hard reset your device. Some 'poorly written' apps or those not updated to run on newer operating systems can cause problems. With so much software out there, it is possible to have conflicts leading to crashes, freezes and hard resets. All in all, the majority of free software you try will be just fine. Don't try to do to much at one time and keep your backups current. Have fun!!

goonie

Just one more person to chime in. Yes, freeware for the Palm is very safe, and often is as good or better than commercial software. Dick Tracy's two sources are reputable, and where I always check first. There are plenty of worthwhile commercial applications that may be worth your spending money, but even those can mostly be trialed for a limited period of time for free.

If you're adventuresome and download lots of applications, you may have issues with software conflicting with other pieces of software, or software that taxes the available memory resulting in crashes. That's pretty much a hit-or-miss thing specific to the combination of things you have running on your Palm. Thankfully, viruses are not an issue, however.

If you think you're going to tinker with lots of software titles, I have one suggestion for software that is worth paying money, and that is Uninstall Manager by Northglide:

http://www.northglide.com/

That program monitors every application you load on your Palm and makes sure that if you wish to delete an application, all of the related files get deleted as well. It's possible to have "orphan" files floating around if you delete applications directly from the Palm's launcher.

intellidryad

Get a backup software, you'd need them whenever an app screws up. Restoring via hotsync never worked for me, it always stops at the "graffiti shortcut files".

Most freeware are good, but some (a tiny number, though) might not be compatible with some models, causing a crash, or worse, hard-reset. However, hard-resets don't always come from freeware. Docs to go just screwed up my device yesterday!

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my blog:http://intellidryad.blogspot.com/
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Cygnet

Will second Northglide apps also, forgot to mention this in my earlier post ,

The uninstall app also has a 'sandbox' scenario where it will monitor the new app installed while you play... eerr i mean test it and will hopefully allow you to get out of any difficult situation.... before properly installing it,

Although I have never tried the sandbox option as I tend to go the if it breaks do a restore route, as I also think that an occasional Hard reset / fresh install or restore seems to clean / perk up my palm but I do 'mess' around continually with testing new apps in a true geek styleee, I think this last comment applies particularly to T5/X and Lifedrive as there have been numerous post regarding stability of these two machines with certain apps / scenarios.

SC

pruss

There is no spyware that I know of. There is such a thing as buggy software, of course.

__________________
Alex Pruss

For my shareware (FontSmoother, myKbd, mySkin, Accenter, FastLaunch and AtomClock) and freeware PalmOS software, go here: http://pruss.mobi

dmccunney

I have about 450 programs of various types installed on my Tapwave Zodiac 2.

My launcher (Launcher X), Documents to Go, Novarra's nWeb browser, pEdit, and Wordsmith are shareware/commercial apps I paid for. Everything else is freeware, and a lot of it is open source as well.

I have had no problems because of it.

The majority of Palm freeware is written by developers who do it as a hooby. A lot of it seems to be "What? There's no Palm program to do this? I'm a programmer! I'll write one!", and having gotten it to do what they need, release it so that other folks can use it as well.

Two sources I check regularly are Freeware Palm and PalmOpensource. Another source woth checking occasionally is Source forge, the largest repository of open source development efforts. A number of PalmOS projects are hosted there.

Just looking at the Main tab in Launcher X, where my most used applications reside, I have

Big Clock, a superb clock/calendar/alarm/timer app
KsDatebook, a Datebook replacement with more features
KsToDo, a ToDo replacement with more features
LionDoc, a Palm "doc" reader that supports documents on a card and zText documents
MoePaint, a color paint program
PalmFiction, an ebook viewer that handles doc files, zText files, RTF files, and plain ASCII text files
PalmPDF, a PDF viewer for PalmOS that handles native Adobe PDF files
Plucker, an offline HTML file viewer
PsMemo, a Memopad replacement with more features, and
TCPMP, a media player that shows AVI and MPEG video, plays MP3 and Ogg music files, and displays JPG and PNG images among other things.

All are freeware. Big Clock, LionDoc, PalmFiction, PalmPDF, Plucker, and TCPMP are open source, too.
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Dennis