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AnchorDesk

John Morris and Josh Taylor
End of the road for the unconnected handheld?

John Morris and Josh Taylor
Contributing Editors, AnchorDesk
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
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It may be a little premature to declare the desktop cradle an endangered species. But the market for PDAs with wireless networking--both local- and wide-area--is heating up. By this holiday season, that plain old handheld organizer could look like a dinosaur.

The latest news is from Toshiba, which just became the first vendor to release a Pocket PC with integrated 802.11b wireless networking. The $599 Pocket PC e740 is also the first Pocket PC to use the more powerful XScale processor, but at first glance our reviews team didn't notice much of a performance difference versus existing models with StrongARM chips.

IN ONE SENSE, the e740 is nothing new--you can add 802.11b access to any Pocket PC with a CF slot, using products such as the Socket Low Power Wireless LAN Card. But the e740's integrated radio leaves both the CF and SD slots free. Of course, having 802.11b won't help much once you leave your home or office, unless efforts to create more public Wi-Fi "hot spots" start to catch on.

Perhaps sensing that wireless connectivity is one area where the Pocket PC hasn't overtaken Palm, the latter company and its partners are moving quickly to incorporate similar features into their devices. The next version of the Palm OS, which has already been released to developers and should start to show up on devices around the end of the year, will include Wi-Fi support. (It already has drivers for Bluetooth personal-area networking and cellular networks.)

Among all makers of Palm OS-based organizers, Handspring has taken the biggest gamble on wireless voice and data with the release of its Treo line of communicators. According to news reports, a CDMA version of the Treo that will reportedly offer faster data speeds will be available later this year.

BUT THIS IS NO LONGER a two-horse race between Pocket PC and Palm. Nokia recently released a new version of its all-on-one Communicator, the 9290. Until now, this rather large cell phone has always been much more popular in Europe than in the United States. At the opposite extreme in terms of size will be the HipTop from start-up Danger. The company says it's close to finally shipping this long-awaited device, which will look more like an overgrown pager and will include wireless data, but not voice.

Recently we had a chance to try a slightly different approach to wireless Internet access and e-mail using a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, the Sony Ericsson T68, and a Compaq iPaq H3835 with a Socket Bluetooth CF card. Once we set up a dial-up networking account for our existing EarthLink account using Socket's excellent Connection Manager software, we were able to browse the Web and check e-mail wireless from anywhere--we didn't even need to take the 2.9-ounce phone out of our shirt pockets to connect (or disconnect).

Before long, expect to see nearly all handhelds ship with some form of wireless access. And in the short term, if you can pick up a wireless-enabled handheld for between $50 and $100 more than a standard PDA, you should give it some serious thought.

What do you think? Will your next PDA be wireless? Tell us in Talkback!

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