Could Your Palm Damage Your PC?

A California law firm has filed suit against Palm and its former parent company 3Com, claiming that a feature used to synchronize data between Palm's handheld computers and PCs can damage motherboards.

The suit, filed on Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court by Pinnacle Law Group LLP, alleges that Palm and 3Com failed to warn users that the HotSync feature in Palm computers could damage certain models of PCs.

Specifically, the suit charges that the HotSync feature can disable the serial port on certain brands of PCs, resulting in the user needing to buy a new motherboard. The suit doesn't specify which brands of PCs allegedly are affected, and the attorneys filing the suit didn't immediately return calls.

"Palm is not aware of any HotSync operation that will cause damage to computer motherboards," says Marlene Somsak, a Palm spokesperson.

Trouble Reported

However, one customer reports that she experienced a serial port failure "more than once, with more than one PDA and PC" more than six months ago, and Palm was familiar with the problem.

When she contacted Palm about the problem around December 2000, Palm user Amy Langill says, a Palm technical support representative told her that "'floating voltage' caused by the power supply to the Palm V cradle caused it to physically damage serial ports on certain motherboards," she says.

"They advised us to purchase a USB cradle which would not have such issues," Langill says. "We opted to stop buying Palm Vs instead."

Since news of the lawsuit emerged, one Web site for Palm enthusiasts, Palminfocenter.com, had at least three customers post complaints about damaged motherboards of Dell PCs with Palm cradles attached.

"One of my employees had the same problem with two of our other Dells," one user wrote about the serial port failure.

Class Action Sought

The suit was filed on behalf of two California Palm owners, and seeks class action status for other users in the United States who bought certain models of the Palm V and Palm Vx and who may have been affected by the problem. The allegedly defective Palms were sold since 1999, and the law firm estimates that "hundreds of thousands" of users were affected.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction requiring Palm to warn users that its personal digital assistants can harm their PCs.

New Reports Surface

Pinnacle first heard of the problems occurring with PCs from Dell. However, after media reports about the suit, the firm received e-mail from people who have mentioned the problems also occurring on systems from Gateway, Compaq, a Toshiba notebook, and even Apple, says Andrew August, an attorney with Pinnacle.

The scope of Palm models affected has also increased, August says. "Now we've been getting e-mail from people with [Palm] IIIcs." August estimates the firm has received anywhere between 12 and 30 e-mail messages from people who experienced similar problems while Palms were connected to their serial ports or USB ports.

One analyst says that if the allegations are true, this would be the first time he has heard of a serial port being damaged by a device attached to it.

"If this is true, it sounds like there's some sort of hardware design problem in the cradle," speculates Chris Le Tocq, principal analyst with Guernsey Research in Palo Alto, California.

"I wouldn't call it impossible, but at the very least extremely unusual," he adds.