But the last time I bought a car, back in the dark ages of 1995, the Internet was in its infancy and I didn't have a PalmPilot. We didn't have CarPoint, the wonderful, Microsoft-owned car-buying information source located at http://www.carpoint.com. Now I have ammunition.

When I go into the car dealer, I need to have facts, figures, strategies, and some self-control. By using CarPoint, my always-on-hand PalmPilot, and some add-on software, I'm ready to go to war.

I went into CarPoint and first determined the trade-in value for my car. With the Pilot Desktop open, I created a new memo category: "Car". Then I put the phone, the account number, and my buy-out from my car loan into one memo. To that memo, I added the trade-in values for the car at "fair", "good", and "excellent" condition.

It's still pretty subjective, though. What I think is excellent condition, the sneaky car dealer might claim is only fair (the difference is more than a thousand dollars). So I then copied the definitions of fair, good, and excellent and dropped them into a memo. So now when the crafty car dealer tells me my car's only fair, I'll open up my PalmPilot, read the definitions, and be able to quote him chapter and verse from the Kelley Blue Book, proving my car's actually in good condition. More bucks in my pocket. I like that kind of fair.

But what about sticker shock? All those add-ons, prices, etc? Well, it's more difficult extracting simple text from the over-rendered tables used in CarPoint, but it is possible to grab some important figures and type them into a memo field, so that's what I did.

Finally, what about lease vs. buy? I bought this car. I might want to lease the next. And while I know that a closed-end lease is better, I might forget in the heat of the deal. So, back again to CarPoint. This time, into the lease advisor section. I copied the definitions of closed-end and open-end from CarPoint and pasted them into a new memo in Pilot Desktop.

Next, I needed loan calculators. There are a bunch. I visited our friends at Tucows and PilotGear and downloaded three different calculators. Most of these calculators are oriented towards home-buying. None does lease-specific calculations and I'm not positive if they do APR, but they checked out against the CarPoint payment calculator. If you're a software author, here's a suggestion: write a loan/lease calculator specifically for car buying. I've bought way more cars than homes.

Now I'm armed. Everything I need (other than non-weak knees) exists in my PalmPilot. I'm ready. I'm armed. I even put in new batteries.

Of course, I haven't yet been to the dealer, but that's why God invented procrastination.

Third topic: Palm PCs
This'll be short. We haven't yet gotten our grubby editorial hands on one yet, and I'm sure they're slicker than (* deleted *). But here's a key question. Seriously. Could a Palm PC help me negotiate a better car deal? If not, the hype just isn't worth that much.