Avantgo 2005 is worth a CNET 8 out of 10

[Colin Dunstan]

c|net reviewed Avantgo 2005 and - believe it or not - gave it a whopping 8 out of 10!

Powerful phrases jump out of the review such as "must-have", "virtually painless", "clearly spelled out directions", "without a hitch", "a nice touch", "real excitement", "it was refreshing", "was a cinch", "pretty intuitive" -- making Avantgo 2005 look like THE winner app.

The reviewer's bottom line: AvantGo makes handheld Web surfing a breeze, and it doesn't cost a thing. Need we say more?

I leave it up to you whether they should say more. I deleted Avantgo two years ago from my PDA and never looked back - thanks to Plucker and other Avantgo alternatives.

[Traecer Prime]

I actually tried the AvantGo on my Palm a few months ago (I guess it wasn't the 2005 release, but it wasn't too long ago). I deleted it almost immediately. The syncing process actually seemed to take longer than it used to a few years ago. (I didn't do any empirical tests, so take that with a grain of salt.) The worst part, however, was the browsing experience: AvantGo is FULL of ads. And these aren't the mildly annoying ads from before; these ads get in your face at every opportunity. There are tabs with nothing but ads, and some of the channels required you to view an ad before viewing the channel. Plus, you must supply more information about yourself than ever before, so you can be targetted more effectively. It is a shame, because the screens looked nice; it could very well be a good web browser. But I'm not installing such annoying adware on my PDA in order to browse the web. OTOH, I have a Tungsten T3, so I already have a (lame) browser; others without a browser may not have a choice.