Now this trick is more complicated than the first and requires a few conditions be true. First of all, you're going to need to have your home PC connected to the Internet via a cable modem or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). It won't work if you utilize dial-up access through a modem for retrieving email. The reason for this is that you can't have the HotSync program set up to support modem access and use the same modem to dial out to access your email. Once you set up the HotSync program to use your modem, any other program attempting to access the modem will receive a "modem in use" error.

The next condition is that you have a HotSync conduit available to you that will allow your Palm email program to synchronize with your PC's email package. This isn't a problem with built-in Mail users, and there's a conduit available for MultiMail Pro.

Finally, your email program needs to support attachments. Again, if you're a built-in Mail user, you can use the free Dataviz Mail program if you own the Documents To Go program (at http://www.dataviz.com). It'll allow you to access Word and Excel attachments. MultiMail Pro users will have no problem with Word attachments, as well as all of the other attachment types mentioned above.

Assuming all of these conditions are met, getting the email and attachments is very easy. Just have your PC set up to be running your email program and do a remote HotSync operation with it whenever you want to retrieve your email and attachments. The email program conduit will automatically transfer all your new email messages and any attachments to your Palm device during every HotSync operation. It will even handle any outgoing email from your Palm device automatically.

Summary
There are a wide variety of email solutions for Palm device users. If, like me, you prefer to use a very simple approach to email that requires little in the way of Palm resources, then you should give ProxiMail serious consideration. If you decide you'd rather have a full-featured email package, MultiMail Pro should meet all your needs. Finally, if you need to access SSL-based email, there are a couple of devious approaches to accomplishing this by utilizing a PC to relay email to your Palm device.

Ed Crandell is a computer science professor at Spring Arbor College. When off campus, he runs a Web site for developers using the Waba programming language, an open source language for handhelds at http://www.wabaworkbench.com.