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Palm Finally Announces SD WiFi Card
Estranged42 writes "After years of waiting, Palm announced today that it will release an SD 802.11b card for its Tungsten T3 and Zire 72 handhelds. This comes after years of anticipation and speculation about this card ever happening. It should be arriving sometime in September for $129. I think I'm still looking forward to getting one. The Register and others are carrying the story."
You must have REALY big pants if you can fit an iBook in your pocket.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
* cost of the model
* power consumption
* familiarity
* ease of use
For $1,000 (the cost of a 12" iBook) I can purchase new palms with Wifi cards for myself, my wife, and an extra just for the fun of it.
Even if the iBook had equal power consumption on all components (which is unilkely, given screen size alone), a single palm still uses far less kw/H than the iBook for any given task. Solid-state memory and an always-on OS eliminate both boot-up time and HD seek.
A lot of people can use their palms as easily as a computer. For some folks, it's even easier.
And, of course, if I want to have a palm in the TV room just for random web lookups, I don't need to configure an ibook or leave it out. When i want to pull up the data from a website, I can simply turn on the palm, click on the web-browser program (which can even be bound to a buttom) and go right to the site.
Given the size of a Palm device and the situations in which you would need Wifi with such a device (ie on the go, not doing anything multimedia intensive), it makes perfect sense to go with a more affordable solution.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Bzzzzzz...wrong. Methinks you got your As and Bs confused.
The PowerBook (or, more correctly, Apple's AirPort Extreme MiniPCI card) supports 802.11b and 802.11g.
802.11g is backwards compatible with 802.11b (despite what I overheard some idiot salesman say to a customer at Best Buy once). You can use 802.11b cards with 802.11g access points and 802.11g cards with 802.11b access points. I do this al lthe time. Part of the reason this is possible is because 802.11b and 802.11g operate in the 2.4 GHz range. The backwards-compatibility is also built into the 802.11g spec (IIRC).
802.11a, on the other hand, is 54 Mbps (like 802.11g), but operates in the 5 GHz range and is not compatible with 802.11b or 802.11g.
Some manufacturers make combo cards that work with all three protocols. Apple is not one of them.
CyberDave
This is excellent. Now maybe after i lose THIS tiny expensive peice of hardware it can be friends with my 512mb thumbdrive and my USB bluetooth adapter, wherever they may be. Its nice to know they wont be lonley. Maybe they can use the 802.11 to signal thier location, like Gilligans Island.