Handling Your Handheld

Our CEOs sample Web sites that sell software for personal digital assistants. Here's what they found, what they liked, and what they found lacking.

Tweet

Best of the Web

Our CEOs toured Web sites that sell software for personal digital assistants. What they found, what they liked, and what they found lacking

When a CEO I know flies cross-country, he looks for bright lights on the ground. Not that he cares about the view. He wants to send and receive E-mail on a wireless Palm VII. With a foldout keyboard on the tray table, he types messages with a simple text editor until a populated area comes within range. Then he does quick uploads and downloads -- literally on the fly.

When his plane touches down, he can switch the use of his personal digital assistant (PDA) seamlessly from business to pleasure. During the taxicab ride from the airport, he often dials up Moviefone.com and punches in the zip code of his hotel. By the time he arrives at his destination, he knows which movies are playing where and how many minutes he has until show time.

"It's one of the little things I like the most," says the CEO, who flew 90,000 miles last year alone and has owned five PDAs since he first bought a BOSS, a long-forgotten ancestor of today's devices, in the late 1980s. "When I show up late in the evening, I don't need to spend time looking for a movie. I already know what I want to see." In some cases, when he has just enough time to drop his bags at the hotel before heading to the multiplex, the Palm makes a significant difference. Without it he would be unable to squeeze 100 minutes of entertainment into a 15-hour workday.

Some CEOs buy their first PDA when their shoulders get sore. A few months ago, Sharon Middendorf grew tired of lugging a laptop computer wherever she went. The lead singer and songwriter for the New York City­based rock band Motorbaby, Middendorf is also CEO of the eponymous Motorbaby.com. After some early successes, her band was signed to a major record label. But after the deal fell through, she decided to market and promote the group herself. She recently released a new CD, Rush, but her high-velocity core business is licensing her music for films such as Troma Entertainment's Terror Firmer and television shows like Jack & Jill and Baywatch. "I have to have so much contact information with me all the time," she says. "When I travel, even when I'm just walking around New York, I need my database."

So Middendorf bought a Handspring Visor and began the process of deciding what software she needed to run her life. It started with contact management, but other applications are migrating slowly from her calendar to her handheld. She still, however, makes appointments on paper. "I prefer to see things on the page and write them down," she says. The next application? Probably an MP3 player -- a module that Handspring conveniently offers as a Visor attachment.

Middendorf is one of the nine CEOs who rated Web sites for downloading software for handhelds. The panel included more experienced users than beginners, but the real difference among our CEOs lay in their lifestyles. And that proved to be the crucial difference. It seems that who you are dictates what you download.

Our executives visited the sites to report on the lay of the land as well as to download freeware and shareware. We chose six sites that are getting particularly good buzz. Two sister sites, CNET.com and ZDNet.com, are probably better known as news and information sites, but visitors can find a wide range of software and hardware accessories for all kinds of computers, including handhelds, on them. Palm.com, Palmgear.com, and Handango .com are more tightly focused on handheld applications, and each aspires to be a complete, one-stop shop. Tucows.com is all about downloads -- for every type of computer, including handhelds.

Speaking of downloads, it seems that the men and women of the corner office have indeed mastered them. During our panel's testing of the following sites, not one reviewer found it necessary to call customer service. And few even had to turn to the Help or FAQ sections -- in fact, the favorite response of panelists queried about the sites' online-help function was "N/A." But our CEOs did look especially closely at product quality, as well as site reliability, navigation, and all-around ease of ordering. Here's what they found.

Handango.com
This was among the most popular sites with our CEOs, though some loved it for the same reasons that others found it superfluous. One exec felt it would be easier to bypass this middleman and go directly to the producer. Others praised the site for keeping up with the rapid changes in wireless products and services and for offering a broad selection of software. Some panelists complained that the site had uninspiring graphics and was slow to download. (One CEO even reported that his browser had crashed in the process.) But overall, most of our Handango visitors said they would go back.

ZDNet.com
A technology-news site as well as an E-commerce outlet, ZDNet got high marks for ambition and scope. Veteran users returned over and over to browse for software and read the extensive PDA "Tips and FAQs." Most saw the site as a useful resource for beginners, but one naysayer considered ZDNet "crowded and busy" -- he reported suffering from "information overload" during his visit. The CEOs said that ZDNet filled their orders reliably, although two thought that the checkout process was confusing. The site earned kudos as a research tool. The worst things that anyone could say about the site's huge selection of freeware and shareware were that full versions of the programs weren't available on the site and that leaving ZDNet to visit manufacturers' sites was a bit of a hassle.

Palm.com
Palm won the trust of our panelists simply because it is the official site of manufacturer Palm Inc. Who would know the product better, our CEOs wondered, than the people who make it? "It seems to be PDA central: everything you ever wanted to know about your Palm," one CEO raved. Sure, the panel found some faults. One reviewer who tried to take some items out of the shopping cart before checkout suffered through a few confusing moments. But overall, panelists liked the site's clean layout and good prices. (It should be noted that part of Palm's software section is powered by Palm Gear HQ, the force behind Palmgear.com, reviewed here as well.)

CNET.com
Like its sister ZDNet, CNET offers news as well as downloads -- and the mix proved controversial here as well. "Clear, complete information on each application was the best value of this site," one enthusiast remarked. Panelists judged CNET as a great place to compare prices, although some complained about the sheer volume of information. One called it a resource for the "information junkie," even as another warned of overdose, saying it was just too hard to navigate between news and downloads. Still, even he said he would go back: instead of "Just say no," the consensus seemed to be "Use responsibly."

 1 | 2  NEXT 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Technology Newsletter

Email Address: