Palm Essentials:
Dictionary on Your SD Card
Over the past few weeks, I have been searching for a good dictionary to use with my new Palm phone, the Xplore m68. My criteria is both exact and simple:
1. It must be comphrensive; at least 5mb's worth of data.
2. It must work from the SD card.
I did a Google search, downloaded several programs to do as test run and am pleasantly surprised with the choices out there. Finally, the search was narrowed to three contenders - Dictionary to Go, Paragon's Merriam-Webster and Beiks' BDicty. All these runs speedily on the card and Paragon's comes with all the bells and whistles including pronunciation! That was my choice until I tried Beiks!
As you can see, the user interface is rather simple. Hit the BDicty, out pops the dictionary. You have choice of views and the option to add notes to each word. But what really set BDicty apart from all others (imho blows the competition out of the water) is the large library of dictionaries. I have used TheSarus program that doubles as a spell checker and a thesarus, but when you use BDicty with both the speller (100,000-300,000 words) and the thesarus modules (55,000 words)- what you have in your palm is a lethal weapon.
The above should send the serious Palm user on a beeline to Beiks. But if you are not convinced, why not download the free BDicty Lite and then some of the many free dictionaries at this link. Fill them up on your SD card - it will not take up any of your precious RAM space. My recommendation for Palm users - get the BDicty pro only (US$10), then the English dictionary pro (only US$15 - 3 modules) as well as the English thesarus (US$10). If you are a Bible student, you may go for Easton's Bible Dictionary (US$14.95). Pick up a few free dictionaries as well.
For those who are interested, here is the catalog of BDicty's features:
- Specialized for reference content (dictionaries), resulting in simplified interface and improved speed. This is what I call the zen of Palm.
- Hundreds of language, specialized and entertainment dictionaries and phrasebooks, including free ones; if you do not find your dictionary here Beiks will get one up for you. I don't know about you; but this sold me on BDicty.
- Available on other mobile platforms (Pocket PC, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Sharp Zaurus)
- International Phonetic Alphabet-based database of English pronunciations
- Keyword coloring makes reading easier (requires lexicon versions 2.0 and higher)
- Full text search within dictionary articles turns every dictionary in a thesaurus!
- Support for talking travel phrasebooks with native language speakers
- Support for wide screen portrait and landscape modes /where applicable/
- Specially optimized for speed on new, faster Palm OS 5 devices with ARM processors
- Instant lookup from within any other application
- Extendable with custom articles
- Standard travel phrasebooks
- Unlimited unidirectional dictionaries
- High data compression, leaving more memory for other applications
- Dictionary browsing with dynamic word positioning
- Cross-lookup feature
- Two view modes with adjustable display panes
- True support for MMC, SD, MS external media cards through VFS
- Tested on the whole family of Palm OSŪ devices, up to and including the latest and greatest Palm models (Treo 650, Tungsten T|X, Palm LifeDrive)
- Adjustable font sizes
- Horizontal / Vertical views
- Smart view
- Most recently looked up words list
- Word of the day
- Free software updates
- Download availability online
- Rich, up-to-date documentation