Big Day for Ethernet Cradle and PalmModem, too

Though overshadowed by the m100, to some people two other announcements from Palm today are even more important. The Palm Ethernet Cradle is now available and Palm has officially announced that the 33.6 PalmModem will be available soon.

The Palm Ethernet Cradle allows Palm III and Palm VII series devices to HotSync with their desktop PC over a corporate network no matter how far they are from the PC. I'm sure you are aware you can go to one of your co-worker's desk and use their Palm cradle to HotSync to your PC. Well, this Ethernet Cradle eliminates the need for another PC to be involved.

And, if you invest in the HotSync Server, no one even needs to have a desktop PC to sync to. It can take the place of PCs for an entire group of Palm users.

Palm recommends putting the Ethernet Cradles in lobbies, conference rooms, training centers, labs, cafeterias, or other shared spaces. It will set you back $249.

Palm pulled the 14.4 PalmModem a while back with no fanfare while they worked on a faster version. Well, today they announced the PalmModem Connectivity Kit, a clip-on for the Palm III series

The kit includes a 33.6 snap-on modem and a set of e-mail applications, AOL Mail and MultiMail Pro, and Yahoo! Messenger, an instant messaging application. Notice that two of these are freeware and the AOL Mail requires an AOL account to be useful but it is nice that they are throwing in MultiMail. It will be available through Palm resellers in late August for an as yet undisclosed price.