FCPlus Professional from Infinity Softworks
If you ever wanted the ultimate financial calculator on steroids, FCPlus Professional is it. To make complex calculations easier, FCPlus Professional uses what the company calls worksheets, but what seem to us more like calculator templates. This worksheet design takes the focus off of data entry and calculating and shifts it to data analysis.

QMate by Steve Dakin
No matter where you go, you need to write checks and record the information. While it may seem overkill to use a Palm computer as a checkbook recording device, it's not. Using the Palm device prevents math errors (and that means no bounced check fees). Plus, if you record your checking information into your Palm device, you can upload that information to Quicken without retyping it (avoiding the potential for even more errors). QMate is a well-designed product that records checkbook information on your Palm computer and synchronizes it with Quicken on both Macs and PCs.

Database engines
For such a teeny computer, you can hold a surprisingly large amount of information in the Palm device. While the normal PIM tools can structure most data well, sometimes you need a true database engine, complete with data types, field definitions, searching, and sorting. In this category, PalmPower's editors honor two such products.

JFile from Land-J Technologies
JFile is quite popular among those Palm users "in the know". The new 3.0 version sports in-place editing of certain field types as well as field structure changes on the Palm organizer. We're happy to see data types that include pop-up lists and check boxes in addition to the more pedestrian dates and integers. What makes JFile even more interesting are the add-on links available that connect JFile to products like Access, Excel, and FileMaker.

MobileDB from Mobile Generation
Like JFile, MobileDB supports a variety of database functions. It's a bit lighter in the feature department, but it also takes less of your Palm organizer's precious RAM. One feature we liked was the abundance of conversion options, including an HTML converter. The Mobile Generation Web site also has a wide variety of interesting databases you can download. Of course, we were most amused by the database spotlight, which highlighted the 1999 NBA schedule -- which, of course, is locked out. Mobile Generation was not unaware of the NBA's predicament, as this comment shows: "Ok, so the season is delayed but you can still see what you would have been watching!" It's nice to see they have a sense of humor along with their cool products.

Graffiti replacements
Your esteemed Editor-in-Chief has never been a fan of Graffiti. While others here at PalmPower have had no problem with Graffiti, it's always been a challenge for me. So, I'd like to do everything possible to encourage finding better ways to write on the Palm device. This year, we honor two Graffiti replacement products. Neither solves the problem perfectly, but progress is progress. Frankly, the best we've seen so far is the handwriting recognition in the old Apple Newton MessagePad 2000, which seemed to be able to interpret just about any stroke we threw at it.