What is it? Maps and guides you can load on your palmtop computer.

And then? You don't have to carry all those dead trees around with you.

Books, you mean? Yes. Ever weighed how much paper you take on holiday?

But papers's not scary. Nor is this stuff. The street and route finders plan your journey in seconds and guide you through it, mile by mile.

What, on your tiny screen? Yes: you can change the map scale from, say, an image covering most of East Anglia, down to 1km sq. You can avoid certain areas or choose a scenic route, via South Wales for example.

And it really works? Yes, and there's a version you can connect to a GPS device so that the screen will show you where you are in the world.

What else can you get? Not a lot at the moment: dictionaries, the Michelin Red Guide, Lonely Planet city guides. There's more on the way for the next generation of mobile phones.

What's the downside? Three or four applications would fill an average palmtop's memory. Some are quite pricey compared with books.

How pricey? £49.99 each for Street Planner and Route Planner Millennium, £34.99 for the Michelin Red Guide - all from Palmtop Software 020-7794 9500 for stockists - £29.99 for four Lonely Planet city guides, available in shops from September.

How do you load the programmes? From a CD via your PC, into which you plug the palmtop. To get Lonely Planet guides now, download them from www.citysync.com at $19.99 per city (you have to pay in US dollars).

So what's the alternative? A small mobile library; ask a policeman.

What would cynics say? By the time you've learned how to use it and loaded the software, you could have had a long weekend in Amsterdam, with those tatty old books to keep you company.