The PDA covered so heavily in this months PC Authority has always had a reputation as a primarily functional tool that students and executives use to organise their lives. With this in mind it is interesting to have a look at a product that brings out the lighter, fun side of the PDA. Think about game pads; for example, Nintendo and the market leading Gameboy, and you will have some idea as to what the Q-Pad PDA game pad is trying to emulate.

The Q-Pad is essentially an attachment that hooks into the synchronisation port on the base of a Palm III series, or the TRGPro that is a PalmOS device that is not available here. The pad has a button configuration not unlike that of Nintendos Gameboy. A button in the shape of a cross for manoeuvring, two thumb buttons for shooting games, and two extra buttons for added functionality for more complex games.

This review was written using the Palm IIIc as the test PDA. The user simply installs the Q-Pad drivers into the Palms desktop, and the next time synchronisation occurs the Q-Pad software is installed onto the Palm. But then the fun begins. Activating the software should have been a simple matter of checking a box on the Palm. This prompted a fatal exception error message to pop up in my Palm asking me to reset it. After resetting it I still had no joy getting the Q-Pad to work. I then referred to the supplier who provided a possible fix. After fiddling for a bit I was finally able to solve the problem. Not an auspicious beginning, but then I was assured by the supplier that future updated drivers would not have this problem.

Once the drivers are set up it is a matter of configuring the software to suit the particular game loaded. There are five preset configurations in the software that pretty much cover most standard game control configurations. After selecting the appropriate configuration and activating the game pad you are ready to start playing.

Having owned and religiously played a Nintendo Gameboy I have to say this is a pretty good emulation. The responsiveness of the controls is pretty impressive, and it really did feel as if I was playing with a Gameboy. Having said this, Gameboy technology is pretty old so it should be fairly easy to emulate it.
The hardware that hooks into the Palms synchronisation port is made of plastic, which I found to be quite brittle. The buttons were also quite loose, so Im not sure how susceptible the unit would be to wear and tear.

At the time of writing the supplier could not quote Australian dollars, but quoted a $US25 price that did not include shipping from Taiwan. Not a lot of money to spend, but the Q-Pad is a luxury more than a necessity.