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Technology Stocks : PALM - The rebirth of Palm Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mang Cheng who wrote (4399)	3/23/2001 2:44:27 AM
From: Mang Cheng	Respond to of 6784

"CeBIT - New Palm PDAs Shown With More To Come " HANNOVER, GERMANY, Mar 22, 2001 (Newsbytes via COMTEX) -- Palm [NASDAQ:PALM] is showing off two new personal digital assistants (PDAs) featuring color, expansion and mobile connectivity at the CeBIT German IT show, which opened in Hannover this morning. The new models - the M500 and M505 - are "must-haves" for Palm users, mainly because of their support for expansion and mobile connectivity. Both models are essentially the same Palm chassis, with the M500 having a monochrome screen, and the M505 having a vivid color screen that, contrary to some reports, does not drain the batteries unduly. The M505 has a 16-bit/65,000 color display and, like the M500, is based around the Palm V basic chassis, but is packed with extra features, such as a dual plug-and-play expansion system and a backlit Graffiti stylus pad. The new Palms also feature a dual expansion slot that supports the secure digital (SD) format (http://www.sdcard.org ) and the MultiMediaCard (MMC) format (http://www.mmca.org ). Both these card formats are the size of a postage stamp. It is still early days on these types of expansion cards, but the possibilities for the new format are almost an unlimited as the ubiquitous PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) card, now that more and more PDA vendors are supporting the SD and MMC formats. Both the new Palms are subtly different from their predecessors with a more curved, stylized design. The M500 should be on sale in the US by next month, and in Europe plus elsewhere in the world by the end of May, with a $399 price tag. The color M505 is what most users will be waiting for, as the unit costs just $50 more than the M500 ($449) and will ship in May in the US, although worldwide users will have to wait until June/July to get their hands on the machine. Palm officials on the stand at CeBIT told Newsbytes that the new PDAs will see the Palm Vx drop in price by about $50 to compensate, while the new machines will be available in six language versions - English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese - in their relevant markets. Expansion cards for the new Palms are available in various memory sizes, ranging from eight megabytes (MB) to 256MB. So why doesn't the new color display on the M505 run down the batteries? We put this question to Palm staffers at the show, who said that, like the M500, the M505 uses a new lithium polymer battery that can provide up to three weeks of usage on a single charge. This also helps the new processor in the M5xx series - the Dragonball VZ 33 megahertz - as well as the 8MB of memory supplied as standard on both models. There is also mobile phone-style set of alerts that include a vibrate mode, a blinking light, or a regular audible alarm. To control these new features, the M500 and M505 are the first to use version 4.0 of the Palm operating system. Plans call for other machines in the M5xx series to ship later in the year. Palm's Web site is at palm.com .