Palm Introduces New Handhelds With Educational Pricing
Palm Inc. (www.palm.com/education) recently announced that it is releasing three new handhelds for use in education at pricing that makes achieving a 1-1 student-to-computer ratio a real possibility. Not only are these new handhelds more cost-efficient than traditional desktop computers, they are even smaller and easier to use in the classroom than notebooks.
The Palm Zire 21 ($99) is the updated version of the original Zire handheld, featuring four times more memory, a faster processor and additional software than its predecessor. For the student, the Zire 21 runs math and language arts programs, and can use Palm's wireless keyboard via infrared beaming. To help teachers with classroom management, the Zire 21 also features the newest versions of Date Book, Address Book, Note Pad and To-Do List.
At the next level of handheld computing sits the Palm Tungsten E ($199), which offers 32 MB of memory and a Texas Instruments Arm-based OMAP 311 processor, which allows teachers and students to listen to music files and audio books. The handheld's sharp 320 x 320 resolution makes viewing movie clips easy, while its personal information management suite helps teachers and students keep track of their schedules.
Finally, the Palm Tungsten T3 ($399) is the first Palm to support a high-resolution color screen in landscape, which means that this is also the most sophisticated Palm for educational use. The T3 has double the screen size of previous Palms and a new soft input screen for writing in Graffiti 2. The 400 MHz Intel XScale processor and 64 MB of RAM allow for faster processing of complex documents and applications.
This article originally appeared in the 11/01/2003 issue of THE Journal.