Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Inc., has been hinting for quite some time that Palm has had a "third business" in the works (after PDAs and smartphones) but all the hinting has come to an end today (press release). So, Hawkins will be announcing and demonstrating the new product tomorrow at Walt Mossberg's D: All Things Digital conference. He insists that it's not a PDA and not a smartphone, but it's the next logical step in the advancement of mobile computing. The word on the Palm Entrepreneurs Forum today (from a developer who claims to be in the know):

Update: A little bird that I trust on such matters tells me that most of the information that follows is actually quite wrong! See if you can guess which parts. Woo hoo! Isn't this fun?

• It's a wireless Linux tablet
• It's a little bigger than a Nokia N800, a little smaller than the HTC Athena
• It has a Garnet virtual machine to run Palm OS applications (in addition, I assume, support for some kind of native applications)
• It runs on both WiFi and cellular networks: CDMA initially, GSM very soon after
• It has remote audio/video/file access and streaming capability
• It'll set you back 999 Euro with the 20% VAT included. What's that, about $1100 in the US? Wow. Definitely not for the mass market. But I'm guessing that's without the carrier subsidy.
• It'll be available this July or August

Nothing official, of course, but I have a strong suspicion it's accurate. I have so many thoughts about this, but I'm going to hold off until after I see it for myself tomorrow.