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Tonight I had a little time to stop by a local CompUSA in San Diego and started looking at some tech gadgets.  I am currently considering a handheld pocket pc or a smart phone.  Ideally, I would like to have a small device which I could carry with me that allows me to access the internet and perhaps e-mail.

One item I saw that was really cool was the new Sony Vaio UX-280P Micro PC.  This small handheld unit comes with a 4.5″ touch screen LCD, integrated Bluetooth wireless technology, WLAN, WWAN, full QWERTY keyboard and lots of other neat features;  a fully functioning PC in a micro package running on Windows XP.  The price is fairly insane at $1900, but it is a cool product.  I really like the portability for travel, as it would be a much more convenient product to tote around through airports.

I also looked online at the Dell Axim line of handheld PCs.  Thes are much more reasonably priced, but are a much less capable as a computing platform than the Sony product mentioned above (lighter weight hardware and runs Windows Mobile 5).  Nonetheless, they likely do the tasks you would need from such a small package without the laptop price (they retail for <$400).  The Axim seems like a reasonable product for getting PDA functions along with wireless web/e-mail access.

The last two products I looked at that had a lot of appeal to me were the Palm Treo 750 and the Samsung Blackjack smartphones.  These are cellular phones/e-mail/broadband wireless devices.  I like the idea of packaging all these features into one device.  The price is also reasonable, however, for best pricing you have to sign up for a two-year contract with the cellular company and buy a data package that can cost ~$20 a month for broadband access. 

I am not sure if I will venture down one of these paths, but it is interesting to see the intersection of all these technologies being merged into smaller devices.  I guess when the price and features are right, I will likely make a move.

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