Needless to say, you need an active cellular data or Wi-Fi connection to use this app. Charting is surprisingly good and quick. You can see trading charts for intraday as well as longer periods easily. Analyzing charts shouldn’t be something you do on a mobile device, but this is pretty much as good as it gets. Notifications integrate well with WebOS and interface is clean and simple. Overall, this is a useful stock market app that covers all the basics and does it in a polished and easy-to-use manner.

The Currency Converter app for the Pre comes with caching – so the app doesn’t call to the server every time you do a conversion. It saves the conversion rate for a set period before reloading it. You can change this reload rate in the preferences menu and clear the cache through the top menu drop-down. Options regarding the reload rate range from every five minutes to every week – you’ll probably want to go with something in-between, perhaps every 12 to 24 hours. Anything faster will be network and battery intensive for no noticeable gain. Finally, the best option is the “shake to reload” option that updates the cached rates when you shake your Palm Pre. This may appear gimmicky at first, but it’s very useful in saving unnecessary calls to the server, as long as you remember to shake your smartphone every time you use this app. A function and simple Palm Pre app that every traveler will find invaluable.

You can track your financial portfolio and the major world indices through this app as well. The really thoughtful and impressive feature is the offline sync. If you are entering an area with no cellular or WiFi reception, you can simply download all the current articles and your stocks portfolio data to your Pre and read and follow the articles completely offline. The download process is smooth and fast and worked like a charm. With this capability, Forbes on the Palm Pre leaps well beyond the other News apps on the App Catalog at present. Forbes brings both current news and in-depth analysis so you won’t be left wanting for more with this app. Forbes is a must-download News application for the Palm Pre.

This is where the fun starts. You can rate your server based on Attitude (Friendly, Neutral, Rude, Downright Mean), Accuracy, Cleanliness, and how long it took to do various things. The speed with which your menus, drinks, starters, meal, and the check were brought to you can all be graded from “What’s taking so long!?” to “Too Quickly.” Depending on how you pick these options, the tip amount based on the percentage of the bill is then pushed upwards (turning the tip amount green in color) or pulled downwards (turning the tip red). The app can probably be very cathartic in situations where you have been very poorly served or when you’re looking to justify a low tip (hey! the Palm Pre told me to undertip!). Dumb Waiter is a fun tip-calculator for the Palm Pre, but certainly falls behind Tip ‘em! in terms of features and design quality.

The app accepts a maximum check amount of four digits, which should hold up fine unless inflation goes through the roof, in which case tipping accurately will be the least of our worries. However, that means Pre users who travel to parts of the world with higher denomination currencies will find this app a little difficult to use (you could divide and multiply by hundred to accommodate things). You can split the tab by up to ten people. I tried to push the app a little by excluding more than the check amount, and it manages just fine without running into trouble with negative numbers and such. Overall, this Palm Pre app is visually delightful and easy-to-use. If you dine out frequently with quite a few people, it will save you a lot of headache.

The Intuit GoPayment application itself is free on the Catalog, but the system costs $19.95 per month plus transaction fees and a one-time setup fee (all payable to Intuit). There are discounts for transactions involving the major credit card networks. Multiple employees can be added to a single GoPayment account. This is a valuable and serious Palm Pre app that should really help Palm get a foot in the door in the enterprise market. If you’re a small business owner with a team in the field, this Palm Pre app may be an invaluable addition to your infrastructure.

Drawbacks include the need to manually refresh the stock feeds. Plus there’s no real way to upgrade to a faster ticker that’s closer to real-time. There’s also the presence of advertising, though it’s pretty small and unobtrusive. For simple portfolio tracking and keeping up to date with the market a few times day, this app works great. If you’re on Wall Street and a derivatives professional, you may have to wait for Bloomberg to come out with their own Palm Pre apps.