Trade Up Program Raises Incentive to Purchase Palm Handhelds

May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Close on the heels of the introduction of two new products aggressively priced and positioned against HP and Sony handhelds, Palm today announced a Trade Up Program. The program encourages handheld buyers to replace competitors' products or upgrade existing Palm handhelds. Consumers will receive a $50 rebate on the purchase of any Tungsten or Zire 71 handheld when they trade in their old handheld. This promotion coincides with results from head-to-head testing by an independent lab, in which Palm Tungsten handhelds equaled or outperformed HP Pocket PC devices in all tests.

"The time is now for handheld users to trade up to Palm," said Ken Wirt, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Palm Solutions Group. "Our new Zire and Tungsten handhelds already are capturing major share in the handheld-to-handheld combat that typifies today's market. The proof of Palm's competitiveness is in the direct product-to-product comparisons issued today."

Competitive Testing
Palm commissioned VeriTest (www.veritest.com), formerly known as ZD Labs and eTesting Labs, the testing division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., to compare battery life, time to data loss after handheld power failure, wireless download speed, storage efficiency, and document handling for the Palm Tungsten T handheld, the Palm Tungsten C handheld, the HP iPAQ h1910 and the HP iPAQ h5450.

-- Battery Life -- The Palm handhelds equaled or outperformed the HP iPAQ devices in all battery-life tests. The Tungsten C handheld posted the highest battery-life scores, including slightly more than eight hours of run-time at full screen brightness. The Tungsten C handheld lasted one hour and 35 minutes longer than the HP iPAQ h5450 in 802.11b wireless battery-life tests.

-- Time to Data Loss After Handheld Power Failure -- The Palm handhelds maintained user data for significantly longer than the iPAQ devices after a power failure in stand-by mode, which causes the units to shut themselves off and remain in their powered-off states. The Tungsten T handheld lasted for 21 days, five times longer than the HP iPAQ h5450, which lasted only four days, in a time to data loss test.

-- Wireless Download Speed -- The Tungsten C handheld was more than twice as fast as the HP iPAQ h5450 in a web page download test, loading the test page in 11.69 seconds as compared to 28.02 seconds for the iPAQ.

-- Storage Efficiency -- Storing a set of contacts, appointments and documents revealed little difference in overall storage efficiency of the handhelds. However, the document sizes on the Palm handhelds were significantly smaller than the equivalent documents on the HP iPAQ devices, with no difference in document formatting or content loss.

-- Document Handling -- In previous document-handling tests, Palm handhelds with DataViz Documents To Go performed far better than the built-in software in Pocket PC devices for handling Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. For example, Documents To Go, which is included with the Palm Tungsten handhelds, allows Palm handheld users to synchronize and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with confidence, knowing that synchronization back to the desktop will retain the integrity of the original document. Fonts and formats generally are preserved. (Use of Microsoft's PocketWord and PocketExcel for the Pocket PC platform can result in lost fonts, degradation of image resolution and lost headers, tables, and charts.)

Palm OS Efficiency, Speed and Value
Beyond the hardware benefits, Palm Tungsten handhelds operate on the Palm OS platform, created for handheld computing and thus designed for efficiency, speed, compact size and overall value. This is a key differentiator from the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, which was condensed from a desktop OS and thus saddled with bulk and compromises. For example, to beam a business card, Palm handheld users need to perform only one or two steps vs. four steps on a Pocket PC device. Also, a Palm handheld owner can enter a Date Book appointment with only two steps vs. seven steps required of a Pocket PC device owner.

Pricing for Trade Up Products
Estimated U.S. street prices for Palm handhelds applicable for the Trade Up Program include the following:

-- Palm Tungsten T handheld -- $349 (new price, effective May 18)
-- Palm Tungsten C handheld -- $499
-- Palm Tungsten W handheld -- $549 (without wireless service; price varies based upon network operator and sales channel)
-- Palm Zire 71 handheld -- $299

The Trade Up Program is effective between May 18 and July 14, 2003. For terms and conditions, visit www.palm.com/promotions/tradeup

Source: Palm, Inc.

Web site: http://www.veritest.com
Web site: http://www.palm.com