A Palmy Import

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

My pal Benenson, who is the world's leading expert in most things, called me over the weekend. "I just got a new Palm IIIe," he bragged, referring to the popular pocket-size digital organizer. He was particularly pleased with the price ($229). I waited, for cruel effect, then asked, "Is it too late to return it?" I am such a blowhard.

It's not that he paid too much, or that the device is subpar. But if I were in the market for a personal digital assistant, I'd wait. I told Benenson what I can't tell you, since I'm bound by one of those stupid nondisclosure agreements. O.K., I can tell you this much: very soon, Handspring, a Palo Alto, Calif., company founded by the folks who built the original, brilliant PalmPilot, will be launching its own PDA. And if it's as good as it looks in demos, I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy anything else.

Perhaps I'm being hasty. Who knows if the thing will really work? Still, I'd hate to be 3Com. Its venerable Palm line is under siege from an army of cheap digital assistants that run the competing Windows CE operating system. And last week a dark horse arrived from Psion Inc., a company based in England whose palmtops are especially popular outside the U.S. The 12.5-oz. device is the Psion 5mx ($549, list) and runs on a clever 32-bit operating system called Epoc, which has legions of devotees, just like Palm's OS. Epoc, you should know, was developed by a consortium called Symbian (which includes Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola), and is being positioned as the standard for next-generation cell phones--a distinct possibility since those manufacturers produce 80% of the world's mobile phones. That's probably why Microsoft referred to Psion as its "No. 1 global threat" in an internal memo last year.

I've been fooling around with the 5mx and find it a generally agreeable machine. It's twice as powerful as its predecessor, runs for 35 hours on two AA batteries and has a built-in voice recorder that amused my children and thrilled my friends. Geeks will also appreciate Epoc's support for Java. Non-geeks will be happy that it's compatible with most Microsoft programs, including Word and Outlook, and is easy to synch through a cable to your applications on a desktop computer.

But the 5mx's coolest feature by far is this: you can get your e-mail or browse the Web wirelessly through a cell phone. The gadget connects to a cell phone via its infrared port; then you can dial out to any Internet service provider. That said, there are only a few mobile phones at the moment that support this feature. I tried it with the Ericsson I 888 World Phone ($300), and it worked fine, though moving data at 9,600 bits per second felt glacial. Also, the e-mail program that came with the palmtop was clumsy--after you download messages, you need to transfer them to another queue to read. (Will someone please fix this?)

Unlike other palmtops, Psion has a built-in keyboard; others use handwriting recognition for data input, which many people (like me) find tedious. However, while my stubby fingers fit comfortably on the keys, the action was sticky, and I frequently found myself retyping words. Still, I would definitely consider buying a 5mx, especially if I were a globetrotter. But since I'm not and I know what's on the horizon, I'm just going to wait.

For more on palmtop computers, see our website at timedigital.com Got a question for Josh? E-mail him at [email protected]