Let's face it: the Internet and e-mail are now absolutely essential business tools, and are pretty damned important to consumers too. But while most of us have, just about, mastered the task of connecting a PC to the Internet using a standard phone line, connecting a portable device such as a laptop PC or handheld PDA to the Internet via a mobile phone is a whole new kettle of fish. The fact is, though, that it is very easy indeed. Or can be.

All you need is a bit of kit known as a GSM adapter or a mobile data adapter instead of a conventional modem. One such GSM adapter is TDK's GlobalPulse, which is a software-based rather than hardware-based product. What this means is that all the data processing required to communicate with the mobile phone is done using a special driver installed on the host computer, rather than by independent hardware on a plug-in card. This, in itself, is not unusual, but almost uniquely amongst the breed, GlobalPulse is available in versions compatible not only with standard laptop PCs, but also with Palm PCs and even Windows CE devices too.

Of course, even though it is a software-based product, whatever platform the GlobalPulse software is installed on still needs to be physically connected to your mobile phone, and this requires hardware. To this end, the package comes with a cable, one end of which connects to your laptop, Palm or CE device's serial port, while the other end attaches to your mobile phone. Since the physical format of the data connectors on most mobile phones vary from phone to phone, or at least from brand to brand, be sure to specify the make and model of your mobile phone when ordering.

How you install GlobalPulse depends on what you are connecting it to. For laptop PCs, all you have to do is put the CD-ROM in your drive, click a few buttons, and about ten minutes later you are ready to roll. Installation for Palm and CE platforms is almost as easy, but involves connecting your hand-held to a PC then running a special installation routine to copy the required applications from the PC's CD-ROM drive to the PDA.

Surprisingly, no matter which platform you use GlobalPulse with, the facilities provided are identical in nature, though obviously not in the way they look and feel. The most important of these facilities is also the most basic - the ability to connect to any dial-up network, including the Internet, and also to send and receive faxes. Unless they happen to be provided as standard with the laptop, handheld or PDA you are using, you will need to provide your own Web browser, fax application or e-mail package in order to make use of this facility. Having said that, a version of GlobalPulse for the Palm PC is available with a bundled e-mail application.

Additional software is not necessary in order to make use of GlobalPulse's other two main features, namely SMS (Short Message Service) transmission and reception plus phonebook management facilities, as both are handled by bundled utilities.

For our tests, we used the Windows 95, 98, 2000 and NT 4.0-compatible version of the product, and found that all the facilities provided by the package worked very well and, more importantly, very reliably. What's more, despite being a software-based product, which would usually tend to demand plenty of hardware resources, GlobalPulse will work fine on a basic Pentium-based notebook with just 8Mb of Ram installed. Best of all, though, the package as a whole was very easy to use, even for the novice. This is something that simply cannot be said of some GSM adapters, so in this respect TDK should be proud.

An easy to use, very flexible and relatively inexpensive product, TDK's GlobalPulse has a great deal going for it. Our only complaint is that the main product manual is supplied on disk in the form of a PDF file rather than being printed on paper. But this is a minor gripe, especially since you won't really need to refer to the manual very often unless you are totally new to the world of dial-up communications and mobile phones.