ACCESS introduced a beta version of its Garnet VM (virtual machine) Palm OS emulator for Nokia's series of Internet Tablets last fall. This week it rolled out beta 2 of the software. Once known as Palm OS Garnet, the Garnet mobile platform was developed by former Palm subsidiary PalmSource, which was acquired and absorbed by ACCESS a couple of years ago.

Garnet VM makes it possible for these Linux-run tablets - the N770, N800 and N810 - to run the over 30,000 applications developed for the Palm OS over the years, greatly increasing the amount of software available to users of these Wi-Fi (not cellular) wireless devices.

Some of the most popular applications (i.e. Google Maps, Snappermail, DateBk5 as well as games like Bejeweled, PacMan, and Sudoku) on the market aren't available for Nokia's tablets. With Garnet VM installed, they are.

New Features in beta 2 of Garnet VM include:

 Full screen support with 3 display modes: portrait full screen, portrait windowed and portrait landscape

 Display mode hot-switching

 SDL support: Garnet VM display subsystem now uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for better performances

The update also fixes a floating point bug so the Palm OS MathLib is now fully supported.

For the last couple of years, ACCESS has been developing and fine-tuning its follow up to the Palm OS, the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP). The version for Nokia's devices grew out of that work.

You can download the beta of Garnet VM now from the ACCESS Web site. There's a different version of the beta software for the three versions of Nokia's Linux OS - OS2008, OS2007, and OS2006 - available for the Wi-Fi tablets.