No injuries reported
This spring has seen a flurry of exciting activity on the Palm
front, with no less than five major product releases from Palm
Computing and its hardware licensees.
VISOR EDGE
On March 12th, Palm spin-off Handspring (Handspring.com
) announced
its new Visor Edge
,
built no doubt in response to customer demand for a slim-line unit
from the company to compete with Palm's V series. Like a Palm Vx, the
Edge is an 8Mb monochrome device with a sleek metal case. The Edge,
however, sports a faster 33 MHz processor, comes in three colors (red,
silver, and blue), and offers a new flashing LED alarm for silent
notification. It even supports Handspring's Springboard expansion
modules through a functional, if slightly awkward "backpack"
add-on which clips onto the rear of the unit. The Edge
retails for $399, and is otherwise very similar to a
Palm Vx, except that ships with OS 3.5.2 in non-
upgradeable ROM instead of more costly Flash-RAM used
on most Palm models.
PALM M500, M505
Not to be outdone by one of its licensees, Palm countered one week
later by announcing its own m500 ($399) and m505 ($449) organizers.
Avoiding the inevitable Roman numeral shortages with its former
product naming, Palm adopted a similar modern but confusing numbering
scheme used by Nokia for its cell phones. The new devices are a major
step for Palm, answering the prayers of many high-end Palm users,
while at the same time taking a shot across the bow of would-be
Pocket-PC competitors who might otherwise gain
ground against Palm in the battle at the high-end
of the market.
The m500 is a monochrome device that matches or trumps the Edge on
almost every point for the same list price. Like the Edge, both m500
series organizers have rechargeable batteries, 8Mb RAM and 33Mhz
processors. They too have optional silent blinking alarms, but also
support new vibrating alarms. Lastly, they also offer integrated USB
ports for ultra-fast HotSync operations, a feature previously only
available on Handspring Visors.
For expandability, both devices offer a new dual-purpose expansion
slot supporting either standard multimedia card (MMC) or secure
digital (SD) expansion cards and devices. About the size of a postage
stamp, the tiny removable memory cards, along with upcoming external
peripherals mark the first time Palm has adopted a removable expansion
format. Its smaller size along with Palm's marketing muscle is sure
to give Handspring a run for its money.
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