I don’t have a PDA. How much will I have to spend to get one that can run your ebooks?
Where can I buy a PDA on the web?
I bought a PDA a couple of years ago and wasn’t impressed. How different is the experience now?
Is the battery life on a PDA long enough to support out-of-the-office use?
My PDA is already pretty full of data. How much room do your ebooks take up?
The screen resolution on my PDA isn’t great. Will your ebooks work OK?
I already have a PDA. Will your ebooks run on it?
I have a mobile phone. Will your ebooks run on it?
I have a BlackBerry. Will your ebooks run on it?
Isn’t it going to be fiddly getting to a specific part of the ebook?
Why can’t I copy an ebook from one PDA to another?

I don’t have a PDA. How much will I have to spend to get one that can run your ebooks?
PDAs come in price ranges to suit most pockets. Expect to spend around £150 (including VAT) for a basic device with enough memory and a decent screen. PDAs at the lower end of the market, such as the Palm Zire, have slow processors and not much memory and are therefore not suitable for Tart ebooks. If you want a Windows-based PDA, prices start at around £200 (including VAT).

Where can I buy a PDA on the web?
There are lots of places to buy PDAs, both in the High Street and on the web. Prices are generally cheaper on the internet and there are several sites that provide price comparison facilities. Try the following:

Price comparison sites
www.dealtime.co.uk
www.kelkoo.co.uk

Sites to buy from
www.totalpda.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk
www.expansys.co.uk
www.eurosimm.com

I bought a PDA a couple of years ago and wasn’t impressed. How different is the experience now?
Recent technology advances have given major improvements in five areas: size & weight, battery life, screen clarity, data storage capacity and processor speed.

PDA’s have become thinner and lighter - average thickness is now about 15mm and weigh a mere 150g. Some, such as the Palm Tungsten, have retractable screen areas, making them even smaller when not in use.

Average battery life has improved dramatically. Continuous use for at least five hours is common, with recharges only required weekly. Some models come with replaceable batteries, allowing you to charge a spare in a cradle independent from the PDA unit.

Screen resolution is the area of the greatest improvements in the last couple of years. Most colour PDAs offer 240 x 320 pixels and some go to 320 x 480. TFT technology gives support for 65,536 colours allowing photographs to be displayed in stunning clarity. Font technology developments have given text displays that use "sub pixel rendering", meaning reading ebooks is remarkably easy on the eye.

Most PDAs now allow a combination of built-in memory and the use of memory expansion cards. 64Mb of internal program and data storage is now standard in most models. This is more than enough for any of Tart’s ebooks, which vary in size from about 1Mb up to 10Mb. Postage-stamp size memory cards come in a range of sizes from 16Mb right up to 1Gb, and cost from £10. These can be used to store ebooks and are plugged into the PDA when needed, with no setup required.

As you would have expected, PDA processor chips have got better and better, increasing in speed from 16Mhz a couple of years ago, to 400Mhz today. Think back to when a 400Mhz laptop PC was a novelty - it wasn’t that long ago! These chips are now fast enough to run industrial strength software, such as GPS mapping applications, speech recognition and audio and video players.

Is the battery life on a PDA long enough to support out-of-the-office use?
Average battery life has improved dramatically in today’s PDAs. Continuous use for at least five hours is common, with recharges only required weekly. Some models come with replaceable batteries, allowing you to charge a spare in a cradle independent from the PDA unit. PDAs can also be recharged from your car’s cigar lighter.

My PDA is already pretty full of data. How much room do your ebooks take up?
That depends on which ebooks you want to install. Some titles are split up into smaller constituent parts making it easy to install just those parts of a reference work you actually use. Even so, a small ebook will be about 200Kb (0.2Mb) and a large one can be over 10Mb in size. Most PDAs allow extra memory to be installed. This comes in the form of add-on memory cards that are getting cheaper and cheaper. As of late 2003, Secure Digital ("SD") cards cost about £19 for 32Mb, £24 for 64Mb and £36 for 128Mb. Storage as big as 1Gb (1,000 Mb) is available but is fairly expensive.

The screen resolution on my PDA isn’t great. Will your ebooks work OK?
The short answer is "yes", but the reading experience won’t be all that great if the screen resolution is low or you have a black and white display rather than colour. PDAs running Palm OS 5 or Pocket PC 2002 or later, have the ability to use "sub pixel rendering". This allows the ebook text to appear visually similar to printed text by smoothing the edges of each letter. It’s a bit difficult to describe without actually seeing the results for yourself, but if you’re used to seeing just a few lines of text on your PDA screen, you’ll be amazed.

I already have a PDA. Will your ebooks run on it?
That depends on the type and model of PDA you have, but probably. You need to check you have enough free memory and that the screen resolution is OK. A full list of supported devices follows:

Palm Operating System Devices
Anything that runs Palm OS versions 3.x, 4.x or 5.x.
This includes all PDAs from PalmOne, the Sony Clié, the Handspring Treo range and others from Handera, Garmin, IBM, Kyocera, Symbol, Samsung, Acer and GSL.

Microsoft Operating System Devices
Anything that runs Pocket PC 2000, 2002, 2003 or Windows CE versions 2.x or 3.x.
This includes PDAs from Compaq & HP (the iPAQ range), Casio, Acer, Philips, Toshiba, NEC, ViewSonic, Mitac, NEC, the Dell Axim, the Fujitsu Siemens Loox and the O2 XDA.

Dedicated Ebook Devices
Ebook readers from Franklin - the eBookman Series and the Bookman.

If you can’t see your PDA in the list, email us at support@tartsystems.com.

I have a mobile phone. Will your ebooks run on it?
If your phone runs the Symbian operating system or is a Microsoft Smartphone, yes they will. They will also run on the Handspring Treo 600. Current supported phone list:

Nokia 3650, 6600, 7650, 9210, 9290
Sony Ericsson P800, P802, P900
Orange SPV
O2 XDA, XDA II
Handspring Treo 600

If you can’t see your phone in the list, email us at support@tartsystems.com.

It is important to note that Tart ebooks are stored on the phone device itself rather than downloaded page by page through the mobile phone network. This means that they will work even when there is no signal, but it also means that your phone must have enough free storage space for the ebooks you need. Increasingly, mobile phones have the capacity to take extra storage cards so this shouldn’t be an issue in the future.

I have a BlackBerry. Will your ebooks run on it?
Current Blackberry models are not capable of running Tart ebooks.

Isn’t it going to be fiddly getting to a specific part of the ebook?
It’s easier than you would think. That’s because Tart ebooks have been specifically designed to compete with the printed book as an effective reference tool, making locating a section of text as fast as possible. Each ebook title is organised in such a way that finding the most referred to parts can be achieved in just a few screen taps.

The quickest ways to get to what you want are to use:

The Contents Pages
Ebooks are divided into a number of chapters, each with its own contents listing. You can navigate through the various levels of contents using the Contents Pages, accessed from the Navigation Menu or by tapping the button on the bottom toolbar. You can tap book or page icons or the title of the text. Icons represent the following:

	Closed book. Represents part of the ebook with its own contents listing. If tapped, the list of contents will appear.
	Open book. Represents the title of the list of contents. If tapped, contents listing will close and you will return to the contents level above.
	Page. No further level of contents exists. If tapped, you will jump to this part of the ebook.

The Section Number Index
This is a list of all sections and schedule numbers of the main Acts or chapters in an ebook, shown in numerical order. Select the Act or chapters required from the list shown. To go to a known section, simply enter the number into the Search String box using your PDA's keyboard, handwriting recogniser or Graffiti area (Palm users). As you enter numbers, the display will change to show the first matching entry. Tap the entry you need and the ebook opens at the right location.

The ebook Index
Many ebooks have an index of words and phrases or an alphabetical list of definitions and meanings. Tap the button or select Index from the Navigation Menu to display the beginning of the index. To display the list of definitions and meanings, use the link on the first page of the index. You can scroll through the list of words & phrases or jump to the beginning of a part of the alphabet by clicking on the appropriate letter in the blue Navigation Bar at the top of the screen. If you select to enter text, you enter a word or phrase into the Search String box using your PDA's keyboard, handwriting recogniser or Graffiti area (Palm users). As you enter text, the display will change to show the first matching entry. Tap the entry you need and the ebook opens at the right location.

Why can’t I copy an ebook from one PDA to another?
Each ebook you buy is locked to the PDA devices you tell us about via each computer’s "PID". If you do copy an ebook file to another PDA, the software will simply report that can’t run on the new PDA. Call the Tart Systems helpline for assistance (01483 742752) for assistance, or email support@tartsystems.com.