Normsoft Pocket Tunes 3.1 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 23 Sep 2005

Price when reviewed: (around £20) for Deluxe version; $15 (around £8) for Basic version

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

You'll need an audio player program if you want to listen to podcasts with QuickNews. Luckily, there are a couple of good audio player programs for Palm OS handhelds. One of these is Pocket Tunes Deluxe, which has just been updated to version 3.1.

The program now supports DRM-protected audio as used by Rhapsody To Go, Napster To Go and Yahoo! Music Unlimited - in other words, any audio that is protected with Microsoft's Janus technology.

Pocket Tunes has all the audio playback tools you'd expect, including playlists, a surprisingly good equaliser, crossfading and bookmarks. It supports a wide range of audio formats, too, including MP3, PCM, WAV, WMA and Ogg Vorbis.

Getting audio on a Palm OS handheld can be fiddly, and it helps if you have a memory card reader on your PC. Pocket Tunes simplifies the process considerably. As long as you're happy to use Windows Media Player to manage your music, Pocket Tunes lets you synchronise music to the handheld just as you would with any other MP3 player. The process is most seamless with Palm OS handhelds that support Microsoft's Media Transfer Protocol (mostly Palm Tungsten and Zire models), but synchronising is simple with other handhelds, too. If all else fails, you can still transfer files via a HotSync.

Pocket Tunes is a neat program that turns a Palm OS handheld into a capable audio player. Lack of AAC support is a minor complaint, as is the inability to control playback with the handheld's hardware buttons. At this price, though, the Basic version has everything you need to listen to podcasts.

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