The early Lonely Planet guides had a reputation for hard-edged cynicism that bordered on politically incorrect.  They were the best guidebooks for the budget traveler in Asia, but because information changed so fast, the guides were not always entirely 100% accurate and their reach was spotty. But the guides made up for these drawbacks in opinionated and gleeful discoveries -- when you used one of the guides, you felt as if you had fortuitiously bumped into a world weary traveler who wasn’t going to hide either his disgust or his delight at sights he had seen. With this realisitic approach to travel guides, the Lonely Plant guides pointed you towards wonders and pulled you away from traps.

And now, what a difference success brings! Lonely Planet has innumerable travel books prepared by hundreds of researchers worldwide, who select topics by slicing and dicing regions, countries, cities and so on. Even the better guides' rough edges have long since been written away.  At their worst (I used a guide to Greece this summer) they are merely a catalogue of sights and sounds. There is no coherence to the narrative, and there are often only lists of places to go and things to see with no special emphasis on the needs or desires of the budget traveler.

So it was with trepidation that I approached CitySync for the Palm platform. The installation was only slightly confusing. The box screamed that you only got four cities.I was presented with a slew of cities to hotsync onto my Visor.  Aha, I thought. I’m going to get them all!  So I clicked on most of them and installed; then I pressed Hotsync.

And waited and waited and waited.