Avantgo has been around for over 5 years and this 2005 edition adds yet more supported platforms for the PDA delivery system, its success to date is based around the ability to deliver content correctly formatted for the mobile device. There is an online capability which we'll cover later but most users primary use of Avantgo is the ability to download the contents of a portal to their device so that it can be read on the move.

Set-up is simple, after the registration process you select the correct version of Avantgo 2005 for your device, there are version for Palm OS.5, Pocket PC, Symbian UIQ and S60 plus legacy support for windows CE and Palm 0S.4. Both the programme installation and the content upload to your device is administered via active sync on the Microsoft variants, for our tests we used an HP Ipaq and the latest version of active sync.

Having installed the software and configured the PDA ready to receive content it's time to choose some channels, the main Avantgo site has a list of categories and a rudimentary search facility to find sources of media for inclusion in your portal. available to the UK there are some 100 channels of content ranging from the BBC and Reuters to Cnet and the Sci Fi Channel, widen your search to include the USA and you'll have over 1000 channels to play with.

Your account is limited by the amount of content (in Kb) you can download to your device, this sounds bad but isn't as most PDA's and Smartphones aren't exactly blessed with bundles of storage, plus the optimised pages mean that your BBC news subscription will only need 250k. The standard free account is allowed 2mb of content within channels and a total daily refresh of 20mb or 10 complete full refreshes, should this not be enough then you can pay to become a power user and get 8mb and 80mb downloads.

Once you've synchronised your PDA or device with Avantgo'; server (either at home or work) then you access the service via the browser on your device, the Avantgo homepage presents all the channels you have elected to receive and a simple tap opens the homepage of that portal.

From there it really is a refreshingly simple task to browse through the content much as you would with any online service, the content is specifically formatted for mobile devices and using our Ipaq its a huge relief to be able to read something right the way through without scrolling left and right all the time.

The BBC and Reuters portals are very comprehensive and as they are fed from the main websites are frequently updated, the BBC weather is a nice feature to have as you'll always have an up to date forecast on your PDA. If you can't find you favourite techy website within the channels list you can set Avantgo to download the web page and push it to your device, it's not as formatted as the designed portals but it's still readable.

We spent a week downloading content and travelling into London on the occasional trip, this is the typical use of Avantgo, its not quite a replacement for a newspaper but the varied channels mean you get exactly what you want to read. Plus on a GPRS or other wireless enabled device you can use Avantgo wireless to update your content without returning to hook up to a host PC, this has a cost in terms of connectivity but the service from Avantgo is included with the account.

The standard account proved plenty for our heavy use during a week and we found that there was little point in using the wireless feature except for the BBC and Reuters sites and only then if you wanted the most up to date news.

For a free application Avantgo 2005 really is a great bit of software, it finally gives the PDA a purpose and luckily doesn't rely on any form of keyboard for input, sadly there are no plans to support Microsoft windows mobile 2003 for smartphone so our iMate SP3i won't be able to join in just yet.

Avantgo is available from Avantgo.com

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