Palm VII

Palm have managed to suprise everybody by releasing the Palm VII ahead of schedule and under the expected price. Shoppers in New York are able to buy the Palm VII, which has been released for $599. When the Palm VII was announced back in December 1998, it was to ship "before the end of next year" (i.e. 1999), and for under $999. Early developer betas tests would seem to have been encouraging. The Palm VII is a slightly larger version of a Palm III with built-in wireless, and some extensions to their Internet software provided to make accessing web based data sources far easier than would be the case otherwise.

The developer section of Palm's web site includes a free download of the PQA Builder application, which can be used to build these stand alone Palm applications from html, or from inside normal Palm applications.

One other event may have influenced the early release of the Palm VII: AvantGo, who develop a off-line web browser for both Palm and Windows CE, have released a new version of their software as AvantGo.com (http://www.avantgo.com), with features specifically to match those of the Palm VII. Palm believe that the ease of use of a single box solution and the integrated sign-up to their own ISP, Palm.net, will be an important factor for the Palm VII. I have disliked earlier versions of AvantGo because of problems with the downloading of sites, and extreme slowness of their desktop application and synchronisation process.

Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: August 19, 1999