Handspring promises unit availability directly from their Web site in October and as long as they can keep support, supply, and quality at the necessary levels, we think they've got a good start. But should you buy a Handspring device? I'd be cautious. Way back when, we bought a whole bunch of Power Computer desktop machines. Remember them? They were the market-leading darlings of the Macintosh clone makers. And when Steve Jobs came on board, he shut down a $300 million dollar competitor virtually overnight. We know that Handspring has Jeff and Donna and Ed. But do they have a source code license to the Palm OS? What are the terms of support from Palm Computing? What if Palm Computing decides that Handspring's eating too much of their own market? I wouldn't buy a Handspring device yet, until we get a read on quality and reliability. And then, I wouldn't recommend buying one unless you're comfortable living with a device that might be orphaned at any time.

Pragmatic pricing
So, now a basic Palm device is $179. And, if you do want the benefits of a "connected organizer", the basic Visor is also $179 (unless you need to pay the $19 non-USB tax). Is this exciting? Are we reaching new heights in pricing lows?

Well, no.

Back in June, PalmPilot Professionals were selling for $149. In fact, I wrote an entire editorial on the topic. See "The magic number: $149" at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue199906/ppeditorial0699001.html.

What we are seeing is a pricing structure for the mainstream product at $179, as opposed to "blow 'em out of inventory" prices for the PalmPilot Professional. But from a buyer's perspective, who cares? The PalmPilot Professional provides much of what most Palm users demand. Despite what our advertisers and Palm might tell you, the bulk of Palm device users never download new software and never use anywhere near the 1MB that came with the PalmPilot Professional.

Even though the new devices come with twice the RAM and better screens for a mere $30 more, many users won't notice much of a difference (although I'd personally spend $30 to do kind things for my eyes).

So while the new pricing isn't a breakthrough, it's still pretty reasonable. Unless you've just bought a PC.

Last week, I bought a 400Mhz Pentium CPU, with 64MB of RAM and a 6.4GB hard drive. I wrote a check for $183, including tax. Of course, I had to sign up for a few years of the arguably sub-par MSN Internet service, but I needed an ISP anyway. By contrast, with tax, the Palm IIIe would set me back $189. Hardware's getting weird, isn't it?

Precipitous pricing
In other announcements, Palm dropped the price of the Palm VII (that's the wireless one) a hundred bucks, down to $499.They pulled eighty bucks off the price of the Palm V (that's the swoopy-doopy thin one), making it $369. And they pulled seventy dollars out of the price of the Palm IIIx, making it $299.

With 4MB RAM in the Palm IIIx (priced at $299) compared to the 8MB RAM in the Visor Deluxe (priced at $249), the Palm IIIx is going to get its clock cleaned. In addition, the Palm VII and the Palm V are still unreasonably pricey. Granted, Palm's also introduced the Palm Vx, which comes with 8MB of RAM for $449, and has more capability. But it's still $200 more than the Visor Deluxe, just for a prettier case.