If you're like me, you love books. And if you love books and use a computer, you love Amazon.com. Before I got this job writing, I spent a lot of time in the car, driving around and listening to NPR or talk radio. I would frequently hear about a book or album that sounded interesting, but I seldom remembered it when I finally got through traffic and got home to order it. Before Amazon.com, I also had to find time and a bookstore and remember what the book was, rummaging through my car or wallet for the scrap of paper on which I'd scribbled the author or artist's name. With the advent of Amazon.com, all I had to do was fire up the computer at home and order what I wanted. If I remembered that I wanted it at all.

Now I have a Palm VII. And I have the new Amazon.com Anywhere PQA (Palm Query Application) loaded. That means I can hear about a cool book, flip up the antenna, do a quick search, and place the order with one click.

One day, not long after I'd installed Amazon Anywhere, I sat talking with a friend as she went on about a book she thought sounded interesting. As she talked, I flipped up the antenna. In just over a minute I had found the book, read a few reviews, and placed the order: all without her knowledge, striking one Christmas gift off my list. Wireless is good.

Another time I felt like shopping for a few things, but it had been a long, hard day, and I didn't feel like going out into the cold or driving again; and I absolutely didn't want to go fire up the PC, wait for it to boot, and sit there in the cold night air as I browsed in my office chair. I wanted to lie down. So I grabbed my Seven, climbed into bed, and tapped on the Amazon.com shopping cart icon. I found a CD I wanted to buy because of a VH1 "Behind the Music" story I'd caught the night before. I One-Clicked. On a whim, I searched for Bruce Cockburn to see if my favorite artist had any new albums out. He did. After One-Clicking again, I flipped the antenna down, placed my Seven on the nightstand, and snuggled up for a good night's sleep. Wireless is very good.

With the Amazon.com Anywhere PQA, you can get more than books. Searching by category, you can get toys and games, electronics, music, videos, and browse Amazon's auctions. Yes, you can even order a Palm VII from your Palm VII. Indeed, if a friend sees how cool your Seven is and decides he wants to order one right there, he can use your Seven to sign on to his own Amazon.com account and place the order immediately, as long as he has One-Click turned on. Wireless with Amazon.com blows my mind.

As you can see, I really like the Amazon.com PQA. You can get full information on what you are ordering, including the customer reviews, just like on the website. It downloads three reviews at a time, which could tax the user who selected the 50K plan, but the reviews really do enhance the experience, so it's worth it.

My only complaint with this PQA is that when you search, it comes back with only the first three hits. This is intended to save network charges, which is good, but it gives you no option to download the next three hits. Too often the only information you have, such as a part of the title or part of the author's name, doesn't come up in the first three because there are so many matches. While this may save network charges, it effectively wastes the Kbytes I just used to send my query. The truth is, I would rather find the book than download three reviews at a time, which really does use significantly more Kbytes than at least allowing me to find the book. It's a flaw that hasn't been fixed in the follow-up version of the program, and it's a shame. I've had to get to a desktop to place a few orders, a fact that will make some eschew the PQA altogether in favor of the more thorough search abilities on the Web. But not I. I've almost always hit my mark on the first or second try.

One more thing I would like to see is the shipping charges added to the price of the book before I One-Click. This could also be done automatically if the main info screen showed the various options for shipping, allowing me to bypass my One Click shipping settings (currently set at 2-Day) if I want to have it either over night or if I just want to save money with ground service.

But most new programs can use improvement. Amazon.com has hit a homer with their first PQA offering. It is so easy; it's a great demonstration of how useful a wireless Palm computer can be. Because it's wireless, I can be anywhere in the house or out and about and get my shopping done. Because it's a Palm, I can browse and order without even having a flat surface to place the computer on so I can type, like I would have to do with almost any other wireless device; I can be reclining, walking, sitting, or hanging upside down: no gravity required. No keyboard, no cumbersome monitor. No fragile hard disk. No external power supply needed. Just two triple A batteries. Pretty cool.

Amazon.com Anywhere is a free application, occupying only 14K on the Palm VII. With it, they've extended the abilities of my Seven such that they earn the second "Must Have" recommendation among the PQAs we've reviewed. www.palm.net www.amazon.com

-Shawn Barnett