Palm 'Pre'-Enables Epocrates on the Pre

How many of you use Epocrates on a Palm device? If you've been holding onto your old Palm smartphone just for Epocrates, the good news is that you an now upgrade your handset to the forthcoming Pre smartphone and keep your pricey software.

One problem with switching to a new smartphone is that you can't always bring your software with you. Licensing is generally left up to the individual software company, and not all of them want to let you install applications on multiple devices. For those of you who've sunk some serious money into software, that can leave you stranded with rapidly aging hardware.

Smartphone makers, though, don't want you to use aging hardware. They want to you to use their newer gadgets. Palm, maker of the Treo line of smartphones, showed of the next generation of its smartphone earlier this year. As amazing as this new device will be, its brand-new operating system means legacy Palm apps won't be supported at all.

In order to quell what could amount to a lot of ticked off customers, Palm announced an emulator program for the Pre. This program emulator will allow Pre users to install and run any of their legacy Palm OS applications on Pre. Think of it this way, the emulator runs the old Palm operating system within the new one, sort of how like you can run Windows from an Apple machine via Parallels. It's so simple, users can drag-and-drop applications directly from one phone to another. This means the investment you've already made in software, such as Epocrates, won't to go waste.

For the techier-minded of you, here's a video demonstration of exactly how it will work. It's pretty cool. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/v/AGGfWj59N4Y&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1