Apparently, some folks are willing to pay $200 for cool, since we're told the Palm V has been selling quite well. Hey, if you got it, flaunt it.

And then we come to the cost of usage for the Palm VII wireless service. Palm has thankfully reduced pricing to a more acceptable level, but their prices are still high enough that you better be prepared to make very sparse use of your device or pay a measurable per-byte bill that'll take a byte out of your wallet.

So, the pricing's less, but it's still more.

Palm's springboard to spinout success
The last bit of news that struck our fancy was 3Com's decision to spin Palm out as it's own, separate entity. In typical corporate hypemanship, 3Com announced "3Com Announces Plan To Build Two Distinct Leadership Companies In Networking and Handheld Computing". "Leadership Companies", huh? I'll bet that meaningless, self-aggrandizing phrase just made some executives over at 3Com rub their hands together in self-congratulatory glee.

They claim "Palm is uniquely positioned to aggressively drive a number of emerging strategic market segments including 1) handheld operating system licensing, 2) enterprise computing solutions, 3) wireline and wireless Internet services, 4) portal sites and, 5) Palm-branded devices."

If you read into this closely, there are a number of reasons why the Palm spinout makes good corporate sense. First, 3Com's been having some problems lately. Second, Palm's got buzz and could be positioned as a Web company (notice the key words "Internet" and "portal"). This means that, given the current run of whopping stock valuations for Internet companies, Palm could theoretically be given a truly astronomical value.

Strategic synchronicity
I can't fault either Handspring or Palm for their current moves. Every move can be justified as nice and safe, and good for increasing shareholder value. However, as Palm device users, there's nothing here that inspires techno-lust. There's nothing here that makes me want to chuck my venerable, but just as useful PalmPilot Professional with 2MB Upgrade Card for something new.

And that's perhaps the greatest shame. There's nothing exciting enough to make the bulk of Palm's installed base want/crave/lust after the newest product. And until that happens, well...

<<Yawn>>

Jeff Carlson is the author of Palm Organizers Visual QuickStart Guide, available at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201700638/tidbitselectro00A/. Jeff is the Managing Editor of TidBITS at http://www.tidbits.com. He can be reached at jeff@necoffee.com.