Palm's Wireless Handheld Goes National

Handheld PC leader Palm Computing is cutting prices and adding services and functions to its Palm III, V, and VII lines.On Monday, Palm announced the national rollout of the wireless Palm VII connected organizer. Palm also announced the new Vx special edition and a $449 limited retail release of the IIIe special edition, and lowered prices on most of its Palm Pilots.

Previously available at retailers in the New York tristate area and at the Palm Web site for $599, the wireless Palm VII is now available nationwide for $499. The one-time setup fee for Palm VII drops from $19 to $9.

Palm also expanded the monthly service plans for Palm VII's Internet access, Palm.net, and new Web-clipping applications from Amazon, eBay, and Fidelity Investments. You can download as much as 50KB monthly for $9; 150KB for $24; and 300KB for $39. As an enticement, Palm offers 1000KB of monthly downloads for $39 for the next six months.

One download is 300 bytes, so it's pretty hard to use 1000KB in a month, says Michael Lunsford, senior product manager at Palm Computing. Just in case you overindulge, Palm has also reduced the over-limit fee from 30 cents to 20 cents per KB.

Palm has partnered with several third parties to offer e-mail access on the Palm VII. ThinAirMail and IPopper offer access to POP accounts while MonkeyMail and Visto Briefcase offer forwarding services.

Web-Clipping the Platform

Palm boasts 20 partners with 100 applications for its Web-clipping platform, in which Web sites create content for the Palm.net network.

"Web clipping is a query application that sits on your Palm VII," Lunsford says. The query software works with a suitably modified site to download pages suitable for viewing on the handheld.

Lunsford anticipates many more Web-clipping applications from developers who've been awaiting the national rollout of the Palm VII.

"With the national rollout of the wireless Palm VII, Palm has built the [Web clipping] platform on which developers can easily try applications," agrees Martin Reynolds, a research fellow at Dataquest.

Palm V With Memory

Palm also introduced the Palm Vx. With 8MB of memory and faster HotSync synchronization with the PC (155.2KB per second versus 56.6) the Vx is "everything you loved about the Palm V with four times the memory," according to Palm officials. The Palm Vx also includes the AvantGo Web channel manager and broader infrared support for synching with laptops and other devices.

Lunsford expects a disparate audience for the Vx. Some will be "mobile executives who need to carry around a large database," he says. Others will be "power users who've found the 3000 applications you can download off the Web such as the thesaurus, calculator, and dictionary."

In addition, the company reduced the price of the Palm V from $449 to $369. The company is working with America Online to offer AOL on the Palm V.