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SoftMaker Office 2008 beta brings PowerPoint functionality to Pocket PCs

I am in the process of working on a full review of SoftMaker Office 2006 for Pocket PCs in my qwest to turn the HTC Advantage into a full blown portable computer. However, I'll have to adjust my review now since I just received a note that the public beta of SoftMaker Office 2008 for Pocket PCs is now available as a free download for you to try out on your device. The free trial works on Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Classic and Professional devices (not on the non-touch screen devices) and will work until 31 March 2008. An updated beta or the full version will be available after this date.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer

I am in the process of working on a full review of SoftMaker Office 2006 for Pocket PCs in my qwest to turn the HTC Advantage into a full blown portable computer. However, I'll have to adjust my review now since I just received a note that the public beta of SoftMaker Office 2008 for Pocket PCs is now available as a free download for you to try out on your device. The free trial works on Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Classic and Professional devices (not on the non-touch screen devices) and will work until 31 March 2008. An updated beta or the full version will be available after this date.

SoftMaker's Office products for touch screen Windows Mobile device is THE most powerful mobile application I have ever tried and it rivals and even surpasses many desktop programs. There are not really any compromises that you have to make when it comes to working with Microsoft Office documents and the major new feature of this latest software is the inclusion of SoftMaker Presentations 2008 that gives you full editing and creation capabilities for PowerPoint presentations. You don't just get basic slideshow functionality, but all types of formatting, transistions and animations, designs and color schemes, graphics, drawings, backgrounds, notes, and more are included in this module.

SoftMaker didn't stop at adding the Presentations module though as they also made some big changes in TextMaker (the word processor module) and PlanMaker (the spreadsheet module). You can now create PDF files right on your mobile device, you can print using Jetcet Print to Bluetooth-capable printers, you can save documents in OpenDocument format, you can apply borders and shading to pages, and much more. PlanMaker now comes with more than 330 calculation functions.

The current SoftMaker Office 2006 product is available for US$69.95 and I do not yet have information on how much this newest version with the PowerPoint functionality will be. SoftMaker also has Windows and Linux versions of their products that are much less expensive than Microsoft's products so you may want to check those out as well. There are bundle deals too when you buy multiple platform licenses.

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