Stalke writes: "On sunday, PalmSource (the spinoff from Palm responsible for the development of the PalmOS) announced that PalmOS 5 has gone gold. This latest version of the operating system includes support for ARM processors, Bluetooth and 802.11b, high-res displays (320x320; although Sony already uses even high res displays in its NR70) and more. Products with PalmOS 5 should start shipping in just over a months' time!"

RichiP asks: "My memory is so poor I forget friends' birthdays and appointments I made a day ago. I sometimes have an idea I want to jot down but that I end up forgetting when I finally come upon pen & paper. To help myself, I was thinking of purchasing one of those integrated PDA and cellphone devices (first the Handspring Treo then another by Samsung), but I've always felt that these devices were still far from ideal. I was wondering if the Slashdot community would share their wishlist of features for what they believe would be the ideal Personal Digital Assistant. Features for input, processing and output are all welcome. Perhaps the device I want may be years from becoming commercial. Given the right ideas from input from others, I might be able to come up with my own device or start an open project geared towards it." Even if you do feel that PDAs have a limited lifespan, if you had a chance to add a feature to a PDA (especially if you felt it would increase the lifespan of the PDA), what would it be?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I need a GPS receiver for some field research, and am having some trouble finding one that meets my requirements. I need to have the coordinates and time recorded once per second for an extended period (12+ hours) with a decent accuracy (5 meters or so). Ideally, I'm looking for a device which will record real-time to my Dell notebook (running Windows XP), but I'd be okay with one that recorded into it's own memory as long as I could download to my Dell easily and: a) it has enough memory to save a days worth of data or b) it will save about an hours worth of points but is cheap enough that I can get two (so I can tag-team them). I'm working on a research budget, so the solution has to be under $800 (but less is better, or course). I thought a PCMCIA card receiver might be a good solution, but it seems like the stand-alone units have more to offer, so I'm open to either option."

gfilion writes "IEEE Spectrum has an article about nifty wireless adapters that don't require LOS. At first, NLOS wireless may not sound like a big deal. After all, ordinary radios and cellphones are non-line-of-sight devices. But they don't carry broadband data. What makes the latest generation of NLOS wireless technology worth talking about and having is that it delivers data at high rates over substantial distances."

Patrick Morris writes: "I learned that I could put Linux on my iPaq... so of course I did. I did a little research and found thttpd already ported to the ARM platform... So, I've got this poor little 206mHz ARM processor with 64mb running a webserver. Hey, it's kinda cool holding a webserver in your hand and being able to walk around with it."

Ben writes: "I have just reviewed a really innovative case. Noise dampening kits have been available for some time, but I think this is the first solution where the manufacturer has done something to combat the noise coming out of the BACK of the case! With its whisper box, the Noise Control Stealth Tower finally solves this problem" Update: 06/06 21:02 GMT by T : Ben points to this mirror, too.

veg writes: "DaemonNews have kicked-off their new review section with a review of the DataHive server; a funky-looking, BSD-based, SoHo server/firewall. Reminds me of a NeXT cube - I want one!"

pinqkandi writes "Apple released the cool and cheap eMac a few weeks ago -- but for educational purposes only. Today, they announced that it is now available to everyone, for only $1099, making it the cheapest G4 Mac ever. I'll buy one." I won't, but I am glad people who want to buy it, can. It's a nice little machine. I guess Apple doesn't see it cutting into iMac G4 sales, but I wonder if iMac G3 sales (starting at $800) will suffer.

DigitalBiscuit writes: "Today's leading edge laptop PCs are packing serious power under their thin little hoods, enough that even the hard core gamer may sit up and take note. Here's a full showcase (dismantled to show you the innards) with benchmarks on a Dell unit that employs NVIDIA's new GeForce4 440 Go GPU and a Pentium 4M (mobile) processor at 1.6GHz. Take one of these babies to the local LAN meet and be the envy of your Mountain Dew chugging cohorts." Of course, this will cost a lot more than similarly powerful desktop, but some people don't seem to mind that tradeoff.

ikioi writes "It looks like Apple will have 17" and 19" flat panel iMacs later this year." It's funny- the publicity photos of the 15 inch macs really make it look a lot nicer then it is. I finally saw one up close a few weeks ago- the arm and screen is super smooth, but the base looks like a cheap toy. That said, larger screens for the iMac definitely push it into a new territory... not sure if it would convince me to buy one, but it sure would add magic shell to the ice cream.

Brian writes "Details of the e740, Toshiba's XScale model which will be powered by PocketPC 2002 has been leaked. PDA LIVE.com has the scoop and the photo :)" Integrated 802.11b, nice.

KeelSpawn writes "For the most of us who are bored with playing that game called "Snake" -- chasing a black dot with a string of lines -- that likely came standard with your cell phone, here's some interesting news. Try a round of golf instead, or a combat game called "Gladiator." Soon, even the ever popular "Dungeons & Dragons". All those will be playable through cellphones, wirelessly."

ftantil writes "In this article Bob Cringely says traditional monitors (CRTs *and* LCDs) will eventually go the way of the Underwood. I've always liked the idea of seeing the image equivalent of a 27" monitor by looking into a slot in my cellphone, but it never occurred to me that these things could replace TVs too."

Ewann writes "Yet another step closer to the universal translator: Digitimes is reporting that NEC has announced trials of software for your PDA that listens to spoken English and Japanese phrases, translates them, and re-speaks them in the other language. Should be very handy the next time I'm in Tokyo."

ReverseC writes "Think twice before you throw that those computer parts in the garbage. Do you really know where it's going? The Guardian reports China has banned US's electronic junk." We did a previous story about the U.S. dumping electronic scrap in China.

An Anonymous Coward writes about his experience with a brand-new Palm: "Having a few years experience watching co-workers scratching out Grafitti on their little palm-sized toys and being reminded of appointments by musical ring-tones, I decided to take the plunge. More of a dip into a wading pool, as I chose the Palm m105. It was inexpensive enough ($149), and the 8 MB of memory seemed a more prudent choice over the tiny 1 MB in the $99 m100. My experiences quickly turned from elation to dread, however." This is the story of a piece of hardware's inexplicable degradation within 14 days. I thought we were making hardware better than this, but over the past few years, this is becoming more the rule than the exception. Is hardware issue limited to Palm, a case of bad manufacturing of a specific product, or a sign of things to come?

sandbenders asks: "I'm interested in building a product that would be of interest to some Slashdot readers (in other words, it's full of geeky goodness), and I have had great luck finding companies to help me build my design. It uses electricity, obviously, and I know this means that it has to be inspected, listed, etc. by the appropriate bodies. Does anyone have any advice for how to get this process completed, what costs to plan on, or other advice for someone starting up a business of this type?"

An anonymous submitter writes: "Open Source haven icculus.org has updated with a new project: Manticore. Different from most Open Source projects however, Manticore is hardware. It is a 3D graphics acceleration design, coded in VHDL. Although still fairly early in development, its goals are similar to those of other 3D cores, from companies like NVIDIA and ATI. The project includes an SDRAM controller for storage, and a VGA unit for display, in addition to the 3D rendering core. It is available under the Design Science License. Source, Documentation and other information available at the Manticore Homepage."

Giampiero writes "Over at dansdata.com some guy named Dan creates a UPS out of some spare parts. To sum it up, "if you're looking for an industrial-capacity UPS solution, and don't like the prices of the off-the-peg options, it might be easier than you think to roll your own."" Of course you can mentally substitute U.S. 110 volts for Australian 220 volts wherever necessary...

inkfox asks: "It seems that whenever one buys a motherboard, there's already a BIOS upgrade available by the time you get your hands on it, usually dealing with some degenerate hardware behavior. Given that Linux and Windows 2000/XP replace all BIOS routines once loaded, do these upgrades really matter? If a system is successfully booting, is a BIOS upgrade more a risk than it is preventive maintenance?" This may be true, but what if you are running an OS that depends on the BIOS? If the BIOS is replaced by a specific OS, then BIOS upgrades can't really hurt anything, can they?