Excellent Palm Emulator StyleTap Reviewed

I've always been a big Windows Mobile fan, but admit to having dabbled in other mobile/compact OS variations to include--Symbian: on a Nokia Communicator, Familiar Linux: on an old iPAQ, and even a Windows Tablet PC: not even a handheld, admittedly. My wandering was justified in the name of "finding the perfect mobile desktop replacement", and/or boredom. The "other" mobile platforms I cavorted with were all great in their own way, but in my humble opinion, did not offer the range of features and integration that Windows Mobile could provide in a handheld-sized footprint. I recently started searching for a new WM device to replace my aging iPAQ, and much to my chagrin, found that that my options for a strictly non-phone Pocket PC were becoming limited. I really took a hard look at Palm for the first time, perish the thought. Read on to discover how to get the best of both Palm and PPC on your WM device without becoming a total Palm turncoat...using StyleTap!

StyleTap makes it possible for you to poke around in the Palm OS (all from the comfort of your Pocket PC or Smartphone). I didn't know what I was missing, and if you've ever been curious about Palm, you might want to check this out. There are a ton of great applications out there, both old/new!

Install, and Setup:
Installing StyleTap is not much different than any other installation involving Window's Mobile. Connect your device via Active Sync, run the installer and StyleTap will install on your mobile/desktop. There are 2 StyleTap applications required to install and run Palm applications on the emulator: the emulator itself, and a desktop PC Palm-application program installer. You can obtain the OTA (Over-The-Air) installer for the emulator by browsing to the StyleTap web-site from your device, and I like that StyleTap has a mobile page (hint to other mobile vendors). This was the option I took, and is fine if you just want to check out the emulator, as it comes with 3 standard apps (a game called PilotMines, A Shopping List tool, and a very handy search tool called Dir Assist), but to install more Palm apps will require the desktop tool. I came back later and added the tool after I had grabbed a few freebies on-line. Just like with WM, there are a ton of great Palm freeware titles available, and of course commercial applications as well. For the purpose of this review, I grabbed a few that were recommended by some on-line Palm addict forums as essential:

Some Essential Apps:

DiddleBug: A Notepad-like application that allows you to doodle, save text notes, and set alarms for your notes.

FileZ: A file browser tool that includes system stats, file-name filtering, and transfer features.

KMeteo: A weather program that pulls up local weather information for selected cities.

SFCave: A simple game whereby you pilot a "streaming dot" though an ever-narrowing cave.

Google Maps: On-line map tool built for Palm Treo, includes search, directions, business listings, and traffic conditions.

In addition, I noted that many of my favorite Pocket PC apps like TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player) are also available for Palm. It is important to note however that not all Palm apps will automagically work in StyleTap. The site has a long list of known-good titles, but some experimentation may be in order on the user's part to determine if a product will work or not.

Dir Assist a Keeper
Of the StyleTap applications that came pre-loaded, one was a clear stand-out and could arguably give Windows Live Search a run for it's money (now available on WM). It's called Dir Assist. It allows you to look up and dial business and residential phone numbers, get directions, and address information. It will also open your mobile browser and send a link/query via PIE to mapquest.com for a map of the location (outside the emulator).

Google Maps
Of course, you can run the Palm version of Google Maps using StyleTap, which is even better than Dir Assist. You notice I had pizza on my mind when running these searches. Google Maps requires a Java run-time environment to run natively on WM5, so it's handy to be able to run it within StyleTap. There are many other great apps I didn't cover here for brevity, for instance, many medical applications written solely for the Palm platform are available, and several navigation/piloting apps as well.

Using StyleTap
The styleTap application is pretty simple to use. It launches to a default of the emulated Palm environment main display. Program options are available via pulldowns along the top of the display.

Keymapping buttons are often required to run Palm applications (depending on your device), and detailed instructions are provided in the readme file. I found the D-pad worked for game modes on my iPAQ. Along the bottom is a command bar with various control functions:

The StyleTap Launcher (the "S" icon): which will take you back to the main StyleTap display.
The Menu Button: Access Pull-downs from the top as described above.
The Find Button: Find strings in applications. Works much different than the WM find tool (see below)
The Command Toolbar: Cut/paste, clipboard, and transfer files. You can beam files with this control if the application supports it.

Find actually finds!
When you invoke find in StyleTap, it asks every StyleTap application to return results, and is not limited to the built-in PIM apps. For instance, find actually found hits for "Boston" associated in Google Earth. It's my guess that Palm users are very happy with the find function.

StyleTap Tweaks and Tips
The display can be tweaked for a full-screen representation or 66% of the total screen size, and different color depth. The display worked fine in both Portrait and landscape modes on my iPAQ, and if full-screen mode goes off the screen, you can scroll around, etc. StyleTap supports infrared beaming of apps from one device to another via IR, but according to the documentation does not support Bluetooth. That is not exactly true though. StyleTap does support serial over Bluetooth which is technically known as the RFCOMM profile. GPS devices often use this protocol, and there are a number of Palm apps that have features to make use of them (e.g. Soaring Pilot). The StyleTap emulator also supports the Lan Access Profile which allows a device to connect to the internet via a BT access point (sort of like using Wifi). StyleTap supports receiving OBEX objects over Bluetooth if the device has a Microsoft Bluetooth stack (this excludes HP iPAQ devices that use the WIDCOMM stack instead). However, it does not support sending objects in this manner, and since the StyleTap folks have seen little demand for it, probably will not add it anytime soon. The desktop installer will pick up bundled palm apps and supporting files out of a package, and allow you to add multiple app files at once (from a zip, etc.). Another handy feature, is that after installing to your mobile, the palm apps will have shortcuts added to the WM programs folder so you can execute the individual apps straight from WM, which will launch the emulator, and open the app.

I threw in a shot of the file listing from FileZ below. There are so many things I like about this simple freeware (file type colors, filtering), one can only hope WM takes some of these to heart in the next version.

Troubleshooting
I almost forgot to add this tidbit, as I did have a problem with Google Maps, which started crashing StyleTap. The emulator would throw up an error about one of the database files being unable to load, so I tried using the StyleTap desktop installer app to re-install Google with the overwrite all files option. Still no luck, so I used the StyleTap emulator un-install feature to remove the app from StyleTap first, and then re-installed it afresh. Google initialized normally thereafter.