The Zodiac is a fresh offering from a fresh developer. Whilst it may not do anything radically new it is surely successful in taking an existing concept to a much higher level. The Zodiac is essentially a Palm device and sports all the features you would expect from one. From viewing pictures and video to acting as a complete personal information manager, the Zodiac would be at home in any professionals’ hand. It does not stop there though; the Zodiac's main selling point is the enhancements, which have been implemented to dramatically improve the gaming side of Palm OS devices. Ever since bored office workers sought for something to do during their long commutes there has been a market for Palm games. Tapwave saw the gaping hole in this market and produced a piece of hardware, which opens up a plethora of new prospects for mobile Palm gaming. Now we, the gamers, have been given a whole new reason to experience the world of truly mobile computing. An experience which, until now, has been found wanting for the advanced mobile gaming support which would make it complete.

On with the review.

The Zodiac is, it has to be said, a very beautiful piece of hardware. I thought the Tungsten T3 looked good, until I lifted the Zodiac out of its packaging. Its cool charcoal grey metal casing and flowing design put things into perspective and it feels truly secure to hold. Every part of the Zodiac's design flows flawlessly into the overall casing forming the most aesthetically pleasing device I have ever had the pleasure to hold. The console is about the size of a GBA and is significantly lighter and more comfortable to hold.

Packed with the Zodiac in its rather sparse packaging (When I bought a Compaq Aero five years ago the box was roughly thrice the size) is a set of earphones specifically designed for the Zodiac. I was surprised to find that the earphones have a plug which flows around the Zodiacs outer casing keeping with the beautiful design - it is quite fortunate that Tapwave made sure the earphones are of good quality because I would not want to replace them. Along with the earphones is a software CD, the usual compliment of manuals and guides, a sync cable and a charging adaptor. The charging adaptor comes with a small pack of pin-sets so it can be plugged in practically anywhere. The sync cable is another example of the Zodiacs consistent flowing design, it clips snugly against the Zodiac and almost becomes part of it - it is an awful shame that the connection is a little loose and causes the occasional connectivity issue. At the USB end of the sync cable is a connector into which you plug the charging adaptor, this means that you can sync and charge at the same time with just one cable connected directly to your Zodiac - useful for those of us who have cables everywhere and want to keep our desks tidy. I have to mention, also, that the connection between the sync cable and charging cable is yet another example of Tapwave’s design genius - they have certainly gone the whole nine yards to make the Zodiac the best looking piece of kit that money can buy.

Once I had unpacked the Zodiac and finally stopped drooling over its design I started up my laptop and threw the software CD in, I was greeted by a set-up screen and guided through the installation of Tapwave’s customised Palm Desktop software. Everything went smoothly and I was prompted to plug in my Zodiac and attempt a first time Hot-Sync. Despite the slightly lose cable everything went fine and I have had very few problems since.

Enough about Hot-Syncing. It is, after all, just a method of getting all the cool downloadable games onto your shiny new Zodiac...and this is exactly what I did and reviews for these games will be coming shortly. But first let's take a better look at the unit and what you can do with it.

The Zodiac sports a high resolution (480*320) screen; compared to a Pocket PC this is twice the usual resolution in a screen the same physical size which means the 2d graphics are almost always slick and beautiful. Compared to the current generation of PalmOS PDAs it is a touch bigger than all but the likes of the Tungsten T3 as many of these devices sport only 320*320 leaving a space for the silk-screen input area. With a dynamic input area the Zodiac can give you all 480*320 pixels for your gaming, movie playing and picture viewing pleasure.

Arranged around the screen are the hardware buttons and controls, it has 4 main buttons which are marked with a small coloured dot (red, blue, yellow and green), 2 rubber coated shoulder buttons, a "home" button, a "function" button and a fully analogue directional stick with a comfortable rubber grip. The tactile feedback of the button controls is more like that of a PDA than a that of games console so it took me a little while to get used to the feel of them. The PDA-like feel of the buttons is highlighted most in games, which require you to hit them rapidly, they simply do not feel "robust" enough to take a gamers punishment but I have not worn them out yet.

In addition to the gaming controls is the Power button, it sports a lit-up power symbol, which blinks and changes colour to indicate different charging and battery statuses. The Power, Home and Function buttons are almost flush with the outer casing of the Zodiac again in keeping with the excellent design of the device.

On top of the hardware buttons the Zodiac sports the classic and indispensable PDA input device, that is of course the digitiser or touch screen. Most people should be perfectly comfortable operating the screen with a (clean) finger, but for those of you who do not like an extra layer of fingerprints over your games there is a stylus clipped to the back of the Zodiac. The stylus position is one of the design elements in which Tapwave fails miserably, it is extremely irritating to have to turn the device round to clip the stylus on when I have finished using it, and as a result of this I have lost the stylus about 5 times in the course of the day. However, anyone willing to use the nifty radial menus and discover that the function button acts somewhat like "tab" key will find the stylus somewhat redundant for gaming use. This minor design flaw can easily be overlooked from a gaming perspective, but for jotting down notes and performing other more advanced tasks it can get quite frustrating.

The screen is protected quite feebly with a flip down leather-like cover, which could easily slide out of place in a pocket or bag, but as most games consoles and PDAs lack any screen protection this small offering from Tapwave is at least something. I have to say though, that when flipped back over the device the cover makes it even more irritating to get at the stylus.

Leaving the outside of the Zodiac, at last, let's get under the bonnet and see what hardware is hidden inside the slick metal casing.

The Zodiac boasts a Yamaha PA2 sound processor which drives stereo speakers built into the front of the unit, the sound quality is absolutely stunning - the GO. DO. PLAY. start-up screen when the Zodiac is soft-reset plays a thudding sound which I was thoroughly convinced was not coming from the unit itself. Okay, so a thudding is not much of a sound test but my MP3 collection surely is. Using the aforementioned Palm Desktop I transferred some MP3s over to the Zodiac, the software saw that these were automatically put into the right place and ready to play as soon as I started the music player. The sound output of the Zodiac at maximum volume is startlingly loud making it the smallest MP3 "boom box" I have ever seen, the sound is also crystal clear both through the internal speakers and the earphones. In fact at full volume you can plug the earphones in and not even need to put them in your ears. The sound is louder and clearer than both my aging PocketPC and MP3 CD player making the Zodiac my new MP3 player of choice and making half my gadgets redundant in one fell swoop.

For graphics accelerations the Zodiac offers an ATI Imageon 4200 with 8mb SDRAM, this is better than anything currently in any console with the possible exception of the Gizmondo which, at time of writing, is set for an European release next month. From the poor offering of titles which came on an SD card with the Zodiac (Sorry, you do not get this in your retail units) I gleaned some idea of the power of this acceleration, none of the games I have played on the Zodiac yet seem to exploit the graphics acceleration to the limit but this should change as it does naturally with all consoles. Great things are to be expected but any gamer buying the Zodiac specifically for commercial games will most likely be disappointed.

Like all current generation consoles the Zodiac sports multiplayer connectivity features. Tapwave have given us built-in Bluetooth, which is practically a standard in PDAs at the moment. This means a multiplayer game can be quickly and easily organised amongst a few of your friends without the need for additional cables like those for the GBA. The SD card expandability of the Zodiac means that Net Play and longer range WiFi multiplay will most likely be available in the future to any gamer with the cash to spare.

Two SD card slots can be found in the top of the Zodiac, meaning that with 1gb cards you can get a maximum of 2gb storage into the device - more than enough for any gamers needs even if they include MP3s and a full length movie or two. One of the slots supports SDIO devices such as WiFi cards (At time of writing there are no WiFi drivers for the Zodiac, but these are coming soon), cameras and other potential expansions for your device.

So, the Zodiac has this gorgeous design and is essentially a bleeding edge games console but what can it actually do. With the Gizmondo being a commercial-only console and the DS and PSP still something for the near future the Zodiac is sure to have a good run with commercial and homebrew developers alike. The list of things the Zodiac can do will keep getting longer, but I will give a brief run down of some of the current applications and some of those I think will come in the future.

• Music, movies and pictures. The Zodiac has excellent multimedia capabilities. Its high-resolution screen makes it truly excellent for image and video viewing and the sound speaks for itself. At the moment US Zodiac buyers can get a 32mb Zodiac and a 1gb SD card for as little as the price of a 128mb Zodiac 2, this means you have an enormous amount of mobile storage at your disposal on a device with the capabilities to make good use of it.

• 2D and 3D gaming. Both games developed specifically for the Zodiac and a huge backlog of games are available to the hardened gamer. At the moment none of the 3D games really show the true potential of the device, however the 2D games that make good use of the high-resolution screen look absolutely excellent. Warfare Incorporated, for example, is an excellent Command & Conquer style game with graphics to suit.

• Emulation. Possibly the most controversial aspect of the Zodiac is that it is practically built for emulating classics like the SNES, NES, MegaDrive II, SMD and many more. This opens up an enormous catalogue of games for the Zodiac. I have tried Little John Z and although the emulation is not perfect it is highly playable and potentially endless fun.

Internet access. With a Bluetooth or cable connection to your PC or mobile phone you can access the Internet from home or on the go and browse, chat or check your E-mails.

Some of the things we may see in the future:

• WiFi cards giving us Internet access on our Zodiacs at WiFi hotspots and our home wireless networks.

• GSM SDIO cards and drivers allowing the Zodiac to connect to the Internet anywhere and everywhere, I am not sure if such a thing exists or even will exist but I would not be surprised if it did.

• Much larger SD storage. The potential for much larger storage cards is almost unlimited and we may be carrying around a Zodiac with as much storage as an iPod in the near future.

I believe the Zodiac has brought us one step closer...or maybe even to the final step of true mobile computing. We need only wait for these hand held devices to get smarter and faster and we may see them replacing desktop computers and laptops. In the now, the Zodiac makes a truly excellent gaming platform for anyone willing to try out an emulator or two but it definitely needs work on the commercial games front. Watch this space for reviews on commercial games and useful software for your Zodiac.

The console is well designed apart from the irritating location of the stylus and offers a wonderfully diverse variety of multimedia entertainment, useful information management applications, connectivity applications and everything a regular PalmOS PDA can offer... which, in short, is basically everything a PC offers only scaled down accordingly.

If you have the money and want a true mobile entertainment platform then the Zodiac is for you. If you are looking for high quality commercial games then you might be better off sticking with your GBA until we get a better picture of the future of gaming on the Zodiac. That said, the Zodiac has an enormous range of very cheap downloadable puzzle games available for it from places such as PDAMill and Handango, and I am sure we will see some excellent commercial titles very soon.

Philip Howard