Palm Fights Competition With Two New Models

3Com's Palm Computing division has launched not one, but two new models of the popular handheld organizer. What a dilemma for Palm fanatics! One of the new models, the Palm IIIx, has more muscle, with twice the memory of the existing Palm III. The other, the Palm V, has a thin sexy look with an anodized aluminum finish and an embossed leather cover. Product manager David Christopher says besides 4 megabytes of memory, the IIIx can take more of a beating Â…

"It has a more rugged internal design. So if a customer drops a unit it's not Â…we're hopefully going to eliminate some of the service calls that we got with the Palm III."

The IIIx and the V have sharper screens and have upgraded software with built in compatibility with Microsoft Outlook as well as Lotus cc:Mail and Eudora Pro, the most popular email programs around. Palm is facing increasing competition from handhelds running Windows CE. New models with color screens are due out soon. But the ease of use that has made it so popular is still there, and that Palm VÂ….

"When you see the product, it really has a wow factor. It features, it has rechargeable lithium ion batteries, so that with normal operation, just standard hot synching, hot synching meaning dropping the device into a cradle which exchanges the data between the device and your PC, so that everything is backed upÂ…so just with standard hot synching, the device will stay charged."