Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

Palmtop BV are at it again! This was one of their earliest conversions to the Series 5 and is now finally seeing the light of day. Collins English/French Dictionary is a fairly faithful palmtop conversion of the paper-based Easy Learning version. The word count, at 7500, is only half that of the better-known GEM Pocket Dictionary, though it's obviously only the rarer words which are missing. Mind you, more technical terms would have been nice, as items such as 'alkaline' (cells) and 'download' don't seem to be in Collins' database.

Presentation is very clear, with plenty of open space on the screen. Almost every word displayed is hot-linked to something, so watch where you tap! The pen is actually very well used to select items or to trace backwards and forwards through the 'history' file of your hot-linked movements within the program. You can even tag entries for more specific learning at a later time, though there's no way of saving the tagged items before starting to select others, which is a shame. One thing I did appreciate was the way the program intelligently handles 'quick-searching', I could type directly into the main program screen and it instantly brought up the matching word or words in real time.

All the usual Palmtop BV zooming and outlining functions are here in force, together with handy anagrams and crossword features which work in either language. My weakness in french has always been the conjugation of all those verbs, so the included verb tables (see screenshot) are a real boon. They're hyperlinked within themselves but sadly not interfaced back to the main dictionary. So you can't look up a verb in the dictionary and then switch to the verb module to see the conjugation... Still useful, though, and well worth having, especially as the pocket (paper) version doesn't include them...

This is well up to Palmtop's usual commercial quality and as I write this I'm tucking it away in a corner of my CF disk for future reference!... Recommended!

Disclaimer: The following comments are the responsibility of the poster. epoczone.com is not responsible in any way for what they may say.
If you have not already done so, please read the terms and conditions before you post a comment.