Larry Garfield takes a look at the latest and most fully fledged version of DataViz' Documents To Go, and comes to realize why Palm and Sony bundle it with their devices.
There are certainly enough office suites for the Palm OS to go around. Each has its strengths, and for Documents To Go 5 Premium Edition from DataViz, that strength is well-integrated support for almost the entire office-application line, more than any other office suite.
Documents To Go consists of Word To Go for word processing, Sheet To Go for spreadsheets, Slideshow To Go for PowerPoint presentations, Pics To Go for image viewing, and a central Documents To Go app to manage files. There is also a mail app, DataViz Mail, though it is not as integrated into the suite as the rest of the applications are. All of the applications are managed on the desktop-side by a unified Documents To Go Windows manager.
 | Docs To Go is the kitchen sink of Palm office suites
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The Documents To Go desktop app has a simple drop-down menu to switch between users installed on the system as well as categories. The main area of the program is a detailed list of all documents keyed for synchronization for any application for the selected device and category. New files can be added to the list by via simple drag-and-drop, or through a file dialog. Files can also be opened in their appropriate desktop app from within the Documents To Go window. Files created on the handheld will be saved to a directory the user specifies.
Files can also be synchronized directly to a storage card, and the Documents To Go conduit will keep the file on the card synchronized with the versions on the desktop. If a file is edited on both the desktop and handheld, Documents To Go takes the same tactic as the built-in apps do; each copy is transferred to the other system with one of them renamed slightly, and the user is free to merge the changes and delete the extraneous file at his leisure.
Documents To Go does not integrate into Microsoft Office directly, as do some Palm OS office suites. Instead, it supports converting word processing files to Microsoft Word 6 through XP, WordPerfect 6.0 through 9.0, WordPro, Rich Text Format (RTF), or plain text. On the spreadsheet side, it supports Excel 5.0 through XP, QuatroPro, and Lotus 1-2-3. Slideshows synchronize only to Microsoft PowerPoint. Pics To Go also supports most common bitmapped image formats such as GIF and JPG. On the handheld, word processing documents can be saved to either Word To Go format or Palm Doc format, though the latter cannot be edited without converting it to Word To Go format.
On the Palm side, the Documents To Go suite is big. Each individual program is several hundred kilobytes, and all told the base install with all components is just over two megabytes. All files are managed from within the central Documents To Go applet, however, which is only 142 kb. All other files can be placed on an expansion card, however, and there is no need for a transparent loader. Documents To Go will automatically load the necessary program from the memory card as needed, a very welcome feature.
Expansion card support is very complete throughout the entire suite. Files can be synchronized directly to the card, and kept in sync with their desktop copy. Files on a card can be loaded into RAM, edited, and saved back to the card all within the program without any help from a transparent loader. The only catch is that card-based files are placed into a single "card" category rather than being integrated into the other categories. Overall, though, Documents To Go has the most complete and polished storage card handling of any program in its class.
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