On the surface, the Handspring offerings are nothing to write home about. Fundamentally, they're basically Palm III's (even their shape is Palm III-like). Pricing is a bit less and the colors are more consumer friendly, giving them a possible edge with the rank-and-file consumer. But the inclusion of the Springboard slot with all devices opens some opportunities. For example, we expect the company to get considerable flack for selling their cheapest model without a cradle. But there are many people who can benefit from a killer organizer without having a PC (the Sharp Wizard was quite successful as a standalone device). Even so, without a way of backing up the data, there's always a bit of risk. The Springboard backup module solves that problem and for under $200, someone who's not a PC user can still have access to a Palm OS device.

This also sheds light on the inclusion of games and content on cartridges. Again, someone who can't install software or isn't prepared to download goodies from the Internet could add new software by popping in a module. And, of course, the software vendors get added protection from copying.

Handspring did lose some of its pricing advantage with the announcements on October 4. Palm's IIIe was priced at $229 and Handspring's Visor (with cradle) was priced at $179. Then, a few weeks before this issue went to press, Palm told us they planned to reduce the Palm IIIe to $199. Apparently, others they told were equally unimpressed, because just days before their official announcement, Palm dropped the IIIe's price down to $179, matching the price on the Visor and eliminating any really good reason to go out and get a base-level Visor.

We also have severe concerns over Handspring's departure from the standard Palm device cradle. Although Handspring's standard cradle supports USB and therefore (according to Handspring) is going to allow HotSyncs to be about four times faster, no existing devices that use the Palm cradle interface can link with the Visor's. While most modern machines come with USB, there are some support problems (we've seen problems with Windows NT) and if you don't happen to have a USB connector, you're going to need to shell out another nineteen bucks to get a non-USB cradle. So, for about $20 more than the Palm IIIe, you can have a device with the same performance and an incompatible connection.

I need to be pretty harsh on this topic. While, officially, the Palm Computing Platform is really the Palm OS and the desktop software, the reality is that the connection to the cradle is a big part of the unofficial standard. If you want to take advantage of all the add-on goodies out there, you're going to be stuck. Now, in fairness, Palm also departed from the "standard" cradle interface with the Palm V, and this has proven to be something of a problem for them as well. Hardware manufacturers have had to tool up completely separate connectors and models of their products to support both connections. There's no question that this added complexity and incompatibility will somewhat dilute the strong hardware aftermarket; not all vendors will support multiple formats.