You're sounding like a techie.
Oh, no. Shoot me now!

To be fair, for those who do carry a lot of hardware, Springboard might not be a bad idea. And some day, that might be all of us. Look at all the Walkmans out there. Who knows? We could all be gearheads with pocket protectors in ten years.

So what's the bottom line?
The bottom line is that as a non-techie, you should not be leading the charge in adopting an unproven device, even one from Handspring. Palm Computing is stable and established, and most of the other devices are anything but. I know, I know, that's how Microsoft became a monopolist. But if somebody is to prevent Palm from acquiring that position in the PDA business, let the engineers do it. You and I would just be cannon fodder.

So buy a Palm IIIe. It's here, and it does what you need. And if you can't live with that, get a pocket protector. Maybe somebody at Handspring will mistake you for a rich techno-geek and ship you a test model of their next-generation Palm organizer, complete with modules.

Assuming the engineers haven't gotten him, Kevin Quin lives and blasphemes against technology, in Washington, D.C.