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Some 30,000 applications originally written for the Palm Pilot PDA (personal digital assistant) will soon run on Nokias Linux-based Web tablets. The applications will run on top of a virtual machine (VM) currently being beta tested by Access for Nokias 770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets.
The Garnet VM beta is available now for download from Access, with registration. It has reportedly achieved “80 percent compatibility,” with wider compatibility expected pending user feedback. Feedback will be gathered via an agent built into the VM, and through an online compatibility survey. One big early bug: sound is not supported on the 770.
A final version of the Garnet VM will ship by years end—so nows the time to test any Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS) applications of interest, notes Access. The final VM is expected to be available, like the beta, as a free download from the Access Web site.
To install applications on the VM, users copy them to their tablets removable memory card. After installation, the application can be launched from the VMs launch menu. Users can configure how much of their tablets RAM will be consumed by the VM, and can also make stack and heap allocations for each application.