For years, Handspring could claim the upper hand over market leader Palm because its Visor featured a SpringBoard expansion slot that could turn the device into a digital camera, MP3 player or GSM mobile phone.
When it first appeared, the Visor was hailed as a work of genius. Now, with its new m500 and the colour m505, Palm has pretty much levelled the playing field, and is promising much more than HandSpring has delivered.
Behind that claim is the secure digital (SD) technology chosen for its expansion slot.
Developed by Matsushita, SanDisk and Toshiba, and supported by companies such as Microsoft, Compaq, AOL, Intel and Siemens, the SD card is a storage device designed with security, capacity and performance in mind.
For use in video and audio devices, the SD card is built from MultimediaCard technologies but supposedly offers four times the data transfer rate.
Much smaller than the HandSpring modules, the SD card is only about twice as big as a mobile phone Sim (subscriber identity module) card. They work like computer disks, holding data for download on to the hand-held. Besides acting as backups, the cards can also add applications such as e-books, databases, graphics, or even video files without using space on the hand-held.
Palm users have been waiting for the new devices for months after word leaked that Palm was finally going to address users' demands and make units that have expansion slots. Unfortunately, when we finally got the units, we were not able to do much with the expansion slot because the modules were not available.