The great advantage shared by all these devices is that you can theoretically unify all wireless functionality under one device and one wireless plan. You'd no longer have to synchronize your PDA, your phone, and your wireless email devices separately using different software solutions. You use just one set of software applications and pay for just one wireless plan. I strongly believe this is where the future lies for PDAs and phones.

Where Basejet fits in
Basejet also feels that the future lies with converged phone/PDA devices, and they further believe that wireless email is the "killer-app" for these devices. Basejet provides always-on email connectivity to wireless Palm OS devices. They provide an individual user solution that's easy to install and doesn't require any IT changes to your network. They've also announced an enterprise version of their product to address the needs of IT for large corporate rollouts.

The Basejet client is installed on the same desktop where a user's email client resides. After a quick software installation and a couple of HotSync operations, you should be ready to go. The arrival of any new email on the desktop will send a message that wakes up the wireless device and triggers a synchronization with the device, providing remote users with all of their corporate email. Basejet supports both Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and Lotus Notes out of the box. POP3 and IMAP4 users may access their email through Outlook or Notes. Basejet has indicated that by the time you read this review, native support for both POP3 and IMAP will be available.

Technically, the product consists of three components:

• Basejet Launcher: Software that polls the user's mail file and transfers messages to the device;

• Basejet Transporter: Acts as an intermediary between the launcher and the remote device;

• Basejet email client: On-device email client that's used in place of regular Palm OS email application.

Basejet's three-tier architecture is illustrated in Figure A.

FIGURE A


Basejet is built on a three-tier architecture. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Basejet claims to have solved many of the problems of accessing corporate data from behind a firewall. Their software is able to tunnel through firewalls: if a desktop is able to browse the Web, then Basejet should be able to access the wireless device. In addition, data is kept secure and private for the entire time it is traveling between the desktop and the device using a Triple-DES encryption key known only by the desktop and the device and created during Basejet installation.

Getting started
For this review, I was only able to review the client-based version of the project. If you'd like to get started with Basejet, point your browser to http://www.basejet.com and click on the "Beta Available Now" link. Download and launch the install file and follow the directions. One handy feature of the product is that because Basejet installs a new Palm OS application and HotSync conduit, you don't have to worry about conflicts with existing third party conduits or applications.