Client Systems - Mobile Product of the Year 2001

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It’s got an LCD screen that delivers 65,000 colors, it’s got connectivity,
it’s got dual expansion technology and the Palm m505 got your votes as
Datamation.com’s Product of the Year for 2001 in the Client Systems Mobile
category.

The handheld from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palm Inc. garnered 32% of the votes, with 92 of the
288 people respondents in this category selecting the m505.

Voted next-best by Datamation.com and CIN readers was Compaq Computer Corp.’s iPAQ
Pocket PC H3870, which scored 26% of the votes. Third was the Visor
Edge by Handspring Inc., with 17% of the votes.

What puts the Palm m505 at the top of the heap?

Users like its silent alarms, expansion capability, the fact that it’s less
pixilated than other color Palms, and has USB or serial synching support.

Bruce and Marge Brown, in a review for PC Magazine, said “the Palm m505 isn’t a perfect PDA but is easily the best Palm yet.”

Other Product of the Year Stories

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Client Systems — Desktop Product of the Year 2001

Network & Systems Software Product of the Year 2001

Linux Gains Legitimacy in the Enterprise

The full list of winners

Compaq users do like their iPAQs, however. The iPAQ Pocket PC 3835 model,
like the Palm, also has 65,000 colors and wireless connectivity options.

Charles Parker, president of Parker Financial Advisors in Houston, has been
using his for seven months. He especially likes the clear and easy-to-read display. “I have the
backlight
set to adjust brightness automatically, which is great,” he said. “I keep
over 1,000 contact addresses and phone numbers, plus all my tasks that are
synched with my desktop (Microsoft) Outlook.”

Overall, the market for these mobile devices is not as strong as that for
the
well-established laptop computer category, but even so, Gartner Dataquest
estimates sharply rising U.S. sales, from 5.6 million in 2001 to 15.8
million
in 2005.

What’s the future hold for PDAs? More processing power, for one thing.

“We’re seeing a lot of progress in the PDA market, with tremendous
processing
power in increasingly smaller devices,” said Timothy M. McNamara, staff
director for communications at the Consumer Electronics Association.

“We are (also) seeing much more functional combination devices than we have
in previous years,” he said. “Combination PDA/phones and handheld PC’s (with
a multitude of functions) are achieving design specifications that consumers
find functional. Finally, the PDA has really branched outside of its roots
in
the corporate environment, and out to the general consumer in the mass
marketplace. People of all ages are replacing their paper organizers with
PDA
devices that offer much more than just a calendar and address book.”

Other products in this category that were rated by Datamation.com voters
include the Palm m125 with 10% of the votes; the HP Jornada 568 from
the Hewlett-Packard Co. with 9% and the CLIE PEG-T415 from Sony Corp.
with about 6%.