I first noticed PdaReach from JuneFabrics when I purchased their program PdaNet for my Treo 600. When you install PdaNet, you get a popup ad for PdaReach. I saw it in action for the first time when I attended a technology team meeting, and the presenter tried to impress us with her knowledge of all things Palm. I was very impressed with PdaReach.

Here you see PdaReach up and running on my laptop. Surprised? It looks like a Treo 700p against a backdrop, right? PdaReach comes with many different skins so that you can use it with most Palm devices and have it truly look and act like the Palm device you’re using. I specifically point out that it can act like your particular device, because the hard keys are all clickable from your computer desktop (not the alpha keys). With PdaReach, you can use your Treo (or other Palm powered device) without ever physically touching it.

Amazingly simple to set up, you’ll be using PdaReach in no time. Once installed to both your Treo and your pc, all you have to do is start the app from your Treo’s launcher. The pc component automatically starts up, and from there you can fine-tune your settings. This is where you set your skin (Treo 600, 650, or 700p – or a variety of non Treo Palm devices). You can also set the size shown on your pc. (All the screen shots you see in this review show PdaReach double size, but you can set it smaller as well.) This is also where you adjust the settings for the sms and screen capture features that we will look at further on in this review.

The basic purpose of PdaReach is to project your Palm device’s screen to your computer. While this is a perfect solution for any kind of Palm device training, how many of you actually spend time training others to use Palm devices? So why would anyone else want or need PdaReach? I’m glad you asked!

How often do you set your Treo in the cradle, and immediately get a text message forcing you to take your Treo back out of the cradle to read and reply to it? If you are using PdaReach, when your sms comes in you can have it pop up on your computer screen. You even have the option of bypassing your Treo, so that you can reply to it from your computer without ever having to touch your Treo. Bypassing your Treo means you will not get a message notification on your Treo when a sms arrives. PdaReach does give you an audible alert on your computer, as well as a blinking notification in your system tray. Bypassing your Treo is especially nice if you use Butler or another application that reminds you of missed messages. (It would be pointless to be able to leave your Treo in the cradle, if it continues to notify you of messages long after you’ve replied to them!)

As I said earlier, anything you can do on your Treo can be done from your desktop using PdaReach. This is especially nice when working with text-intensive apps, whether editing docs in Documents 2 Go, or setting up appointments and notifying contacts from Agendus. Sometimes working on that cute little Treo keyboard can get tiresome. This is a much less expensive solution than an external keyboard. All you need to do is make sure your Treo and computer are connected via your usb cable, and start PdaReach.

Even copy/pasting is a snap. In the pc options, you simply enable the floating window over edit field. In this screen shot, you can see where I copied text from June Fabrics’ web page and pasted it (right click Paste, or Ctrl V) into the floating box. From there, it goes right into your Treo – in this case, a memo

Perhaps one of the coolest features is drag and drop application installation. You don’t need to perform a full hotsync if you have PdaReach. Just drag the .prc to the PdaReach window and the app is automagically installed.

There are many other features available, including shortcuts, hot keys and F-key functions. There is a fairly comprehensive list on June Fabrics’ website. PdaReach is another one of those amazing applications that the more you use it, the more useful it becomes. As with most apps, it comes with a generous trial period, so why not take it for a spin today!

Related Links

Download PDAReach

Browse software titles in mytreo.net/store.

Filed under: Software reviews