Attention Shoppers!
Monday, January 22, 2001
My quest for the Holy …
iPAQ H3650
Janice Chen, Editor-in-Chief,
ComputerShopper
Anyone in my office will tell you what an avid -- some
might say rabid -- Palm OS proponent I am. For ages
while others were shouting "Windows CE! Philips Nino!"
(remember that one?), I was shouting "too complicated,
too clunky!"
I stayed pretty smug as CE tanked and Palm sales shot
up. But this Pocket PC thing has me worried. Every time
I walk past an office and see a Compaq iPAQ H3650
glowing in its cradle, I find myself getting a pang of
gadget envy.
So I decided to see how much one of those babies would
set me back. I found it first at firstsource.com for
$481.79, but it wasn't in stock and they had almost
50,000 units on backorder! It wasn't in stock at
eCost.com either, but if I could wait a month, the price
was $488.98 plus a $13.95 handling charge but free
shipping (and no tax for my New York address), for a
grand total of $502.93.
After calling several more vendors, I discovered that
Compaq is shipping out the product in such small
quantities that it's backordered practically everywhere. I
finally found the product available at Myinfinity.com, for
$589.99 (plus tax and $10.80 shipping), but was told I
was one of 50 who had placed an order and only 65 units
would be coming in on Tuesday.
Returning to my Palm inclinations, I looked for a Palm
Vx and found a good deal on it at PCnomad.com
($396.99). While I found the product selling for less at
other sites, PCnomad's free shipping and no sales tax for
New York made it the best deal. The site offers a
money-back guarantee for returns within seven days of
receipt, and if you have functional problems with the
product, Pcnomad will pay for the shipping costs.
Of course, a Palm Vx is no Pocket PC (for better or
worse), but for more than $200 less and a guarantee of
the product being in stock, I'll put up with color-screen
envy for a little longer. |
