HP ( Hewlett-Packard Co )  has just announced that it’s acquiring Palm at the tune of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock. The buy out is set to take place on July 31. Current Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is “expected to remain with the company,” though it’s not said in what capacity. Palm was founded in 1992 by Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins and helped originate the handheld computing market with its Palm Pilots in the 1990s. So will this merge will try to get a portion of Apple iPhone , and HTC market.

Something to watch out.

CES 2009 – Shows a lot of Mobile Phone and one of those is The new Palm Pre which has curved body with a slide-out vertical QWERTY keyboard and multi-touch screen. According to those who have seen this in action at CES 2009, It has a slick in appearance and efficient in function, its webOS aims to bring together all of the facets of your life into one seamless application. They are also saying that the Pre looks like it could be a major threat to the iPhone and Android-based G1.

Palm has not set an exact availability date or a price for the Pre, but it will be on Sprint’s 3G network.

Here’s what we know about the specs on the Palm Pre:

• High-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on version)
• 802.11b / g WiFi with WPA, WPA2, 801.1x authentication
• 3.1-inch 24-bit color 480 x 320 display
• Dedicated gesture area below display
• Slide-out portrait QWERTY keyboard (banana slider)
• Integrated IM, MMS, and SMS messaging
• Email: Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Direct Push Technology POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc). So it does push exchange email, but the rest is not push.
• Built-in GPS
• Bluetooth 2.1 EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• High-performance browser
• 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 8GB of internal storage (~7.4GB user available)
• USB mass storage support
• Phone as laptop modem – Bluetooth tethering
• MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
• Proximity sensor for detecting when phone is near face
• Light sensor to automatically dim display
• Audio Formats: MPS, AAC, AAC , AMR, QCELP, WAV Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 Image Formats: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP
• Ringer mute switch
• Removable rechargeable battery
• Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches) Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches) Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
• Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)

Source : treocentral.com

I will be featuring lots of Mobile Phone shown in CES 2009, and I will just show the summary in the Home Page of Tech At Hand Dot net. Other will be shown in the Asides. So that not to flood the readers with lots of information. Just check my Asides. or the CES 2009 Tag

Pictures from Gizmodo

Despite nabbing the first-to-market crown and taking an early lead, Wi-Fi is destined to be overtaken in market volume by Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, according the market research firm In-Stat.

The need for a wireless technology in the future is a must and almost new laptop and PDA manufacturers is keeping in mind that Wi-Fi capability is a must now a days. I believe that because of past changing technology we may here in the future a UWB compatible laptop or palmtop . Additional information regarding UWB can be found here.

But who will gain here? Ofcourse it is the manufacturer because they have to introduce a system compatibility to this. Well that is the past changing technology.

Incoming search terms:

• uwb in the philippines
• uwb in the philippinnes
• UWB vs Wifi

The new Pocket e-Sword is feature rich and user friendly! Pocket e-Sword is developed for the Microsoft Pocket PC platforms, with the coolest features being available under the newest “Windows Mobile 2003″. The really cool thing about Pocket e-Sword is that you can have a complete seminary library with you wherever you go!

Minimal system requirements include:

• Desktop PC running Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, or XP
• Strong Arm/XScale based PDA running Pocket PC 2002, 2003/2003SE, or Windows Mobile 5
• PDA must have a “touch screen”

I will post other finding that I may discover with this fantastic PDA.