Supporting documents
Just like the spreadsheet functionality of Sheet To Go, the DataViz Word To Go application allows you to synchronize Word documents to your handheld. With Word To Go I keep statements of work, contracts, proposals, and other documents handy for reference. If you find that these take too much space in your handheld's main memory, Documents To Go allows storage on memory expansion cards by assigning a category with the same name as that given to the expansion card.

I have also used Word To Go to compose documents but have found it only sufficiently capable for rough drafts. It has much of your basic formatting, such as bold, italic, underline, and alignment. It also manages to preserve and display bullet lists, but it doesn't allow you to create them. I find this limits its utility, since I tend to use bullet lists as a presentation element in most business documents. I also use hierarchical, outline-style bullet lists in article, product, and project ideas documents that I keep on my Palm handheld.

Slideshow To Go provides the ability to take your PowerPoint presentations with you, but I haven't tried that yet.

Documentation and references
As you can imagine, the kinds of consulting I do are very information-intensive. No matter how hard you try to keep everything in your head, there's a point where you have to go find information. That journey is short when you have it in your pocket.

Although some documentation is in Word format, by far the most popular is the Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), usable with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. As discussed in my article on using expansion cards (at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200202/expansion001.html) you can put a lot of PDF files on a 64 MB (or larger) expansion card.

Personally, I have the two latest revisions of all of the Java Enterprise specifications, the Software Engineering Institute's CMMI and SW-CMM documentation, and the product documentation for some of my favorite or most commonly used products, like BEA's WebLogic Server and the Perforce SCM system. I make sure to preserve images and maximize the file size, since storage has not yet become a limiting factor.

Keeping in touch
A handheld is not my favorite tool for staying connected, mostly due to limits of screen size, connection speed, simultaneous connectivity, and keyboard availability and single-tasking. However, there are sufficient tools for it to suffice when traveling light. My main hardware tool for this is the PalmModem. Although I like the idea of Bluetooth or an 802.11b cradle, they aren't yet widely implemented, and when they are, clients sometimes object to "foreign" devices on their network.

For email, I use Eudora from the Eudora Internet Suite for Palm OS (at http://www.eudora.com/internetsuite/). It has all of the basic functionality, like incremental header download and multiple account management, with the added bonus of firing up the EudoraWeb browser when you tap on a link in email. Plus, it synchronizes with my primary email software, Eudora for Windows, and is free.