Over the past few weeks our beloved Palm V has been replaced as well as gained some competition. Handspring introduced it's Visor Edge, Palm's V replacements the m500 and m505, and Sony's new Clie.

Let's start with the Palm m500 series. It has been years and Palm has finally graced us with a significant upgrade to the Palm V. This was needed a year ago, and they have finally caught up. In a slightly modified Palm V case, we get a MultiMedia card slot, faster processor, a new OS, a blinking light, vibrating alarm, and an optional color screen. And you might as well ignore the m500, as anyone who's paying $400 for a PDA will pay $50 more for a color screen--they should have priced the 500 at $300. The MultiMedia card has the potential to add more than more memory; many other gadgets are planned for this, although I still think it will be a while before we get a postage-stamp sized card with a little antenna sticking out of it. So there is your new standard.

Next up is Handspring's Visor Prism. The industrial design is shockingly good, as it seems to be a perfect companion to Apple's new Titanium PowerBook. Especially coming from Handspring, whose previous designed were all low-end consumer ("flavors") oriented. But Handspring must be smokin' the same stuff as Palm's pricing managers, as the Prism's operating system cannot be updated. Worse yet it ships with the already-outdated PalmOS 3.5. And your stuck with it. Plus the piggyback springboard connector isn't practical if you are someone who always has a module in there.

Finally Sony's new Clie. Sony hopped over the competition and actually added significant new features to its updated PDA. Integrated into the unit is a music player (ATRAC-only, but we could live with that), and a color screen that is twice the resolution of others. Take a look at this map screenshot and you'll see how important that is...and imagine it while browsing web pages. Now true, this unit is currently only available in Japan, but I'm sure it will be released worldwide soon enough. Oh, but there's a big problem. Those extra features come at a price--a physical one. One look at this picture and you'll see why. The thickness renders it unusable, at least when compared to the others.

This rule is in my opinion the most important property of a PDA. It's what differentiates them from a palmtop PC. It must be small and thin enough to fit in your pocket comfortably and look like there's nothing more than a wallet in there (This should apply to cell phones too, but that's for another article). If it doesn't fit in your pocket, you won't take it with you everywhere you go, and then the PDA is useless.

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