Free Mobile Dictionary for Your Palm Handheld

Like many other Palm users I've talked to, I enjoy having a dictionary close at hand to let me quickly look up the meaning of unusual or uncommon words. That means, that when I'm away from my desktop, I rely on my Palm for, among a thousand other things, fulfilling that need. Not that long ago the Palm community received some very important, but mixed, news. As with so many other things lately, there was the Bad News, with a silver lining of Good News.

First, the Bad News. ArsLexis, the developers of both Noah Pro Dictionary and Thesaurus (Krzysztof Kowalczyk actually wrote both products) has gone out business.

Many sites claim that this is the beginning of the end for Palm specific or Palm only software developers. However, I'm not so sure. I believe that it is indicative of how the nature of the Palm software developer market is changing, just as the customer market is changing. Many of the software developers closing their doors make products that are facing stiff new competition from services that are available for free on the internet. Once, each Palm was an island, but not anymore. I feel this is becoming a serious factor for software developers because more and more PDAs are being released with built-in internet connectivity, primarily Wi-Fi. But, it is just my opinion.

OK – I digress. Back to the news!

The silver lining I referred to earlier is that behind the Bad News of ArsLexis closing it’s doors, is the simple idea that, unlike many of the other companies that have preceded it, ArsLexis is not abandoning it’s commercial products (or their dedicated users). The Good News is that they have released both Noah Pro Dictionary and Thesaurus as Freeware!

Noah Pro 3.0 - English Dictionary
Noah Pro is an English dictionary for Palm offering 122 thousand words, support for external memory cards such as SD/MMC card or Memory Stick, memory-saving high compression of data, high-resolution screens, color, resident mode for looking up words directly from other applications and much more.

Noah Pro 3.0 offers:

• definitions of 122 thousand words
  
• lookup words directly from other programs (resident mode)
  
• copy & paste definition to clipboard for use in other programs
  
• support for external memory cards (SD/MMC memory cards, Memory Stick)
  
• bookmark interesting words for future reference
  
• 3 different ways of displaying the definition
  
• display customization - choose your own fonts and colors
  
• efficient use of memory thanks to high compression of data
  
• support for latest Palm OS 5 devices
  
• support for 5-Way Navigator in Treo, Palm Tungsten

Thesaurus 1.2 - English Thesaurus
ArsLexis Thesuarus is an English thesaurus offering definitions of 48 thousand words, support for external memory cards such as SD/MMC card or Memory Stick, memory-saving high compression of data, high-resolution screens, latest Palm OS 5 devices and Treo 600/650 and Tungsten 5-Way navigator.

ArsLexis Thesaurus 1.2 offers:

• definitions of 48 thousand words
  
• support for reading database from external memory card such as SD/MMC card or Memory Stick
  
• uses little memory thanks to high compression of data
  
• clean and simple user interface
  
• support for latest Palm OS 5 devices
  
• support for Treo and Tungsten 5-Way Navigator

So, to sum up all my narration above: Now you too can have your own portable dictionary in the Palm in your hand (pun intended) for FREE!

I've been using both of these products for roughly a month now, and while 122,000 words in a dictionary sounds huge (after all it requires almost 5 Megs of space on my SD Card) it's actually not quite as extensive as I expected. I have managed to stump Noah Pro several times. However, despite that, those were a very small percentage of the times that I have called upon it for clarification. This is an excellent pair of products that I for one am extremely grateful was not abandoned. Go to the NoahPro download page, and try them for yourself -- I'm sure you will agree.