According to an anonymous source, Sony is close to releasing its Bluetooth Memory Stick in Europe. If this report is correct, it will be available in about a month for between £130 and £150 inc VAT.

This might be an indication that the company will be releasing it in the U.S. at about the same time, but this isn't definite. Bluetooth has a much larger foothold in Europe than it does in the U.S.

Handango has announced a deal with Pixel Technologies Ltd. to licence its JIVE multi-player cross platform technology. Handango will host JIVE powered multi-player servers and publish multi-player games developed by both Pixel and third parties.

The Sony T415, T425, and N760C have officially been discontinued by Sony. In the UK, Sony dropped the price on the T625C to £300 inc VAT. -Dan Royea and others

McFile 2.1 is now available. This app works as a file manager, allowing users access to the full directory tree on expansion cards. It supports HandEra and Sony hi-res screens, plus the NR series' hi-res+. It costs $12. -Lee Kee Lin

Late last month, Handspring announced a new addition to its lineup, the Treo 90. Despite being part of Treo line, it isn't a smartphone. Instead, it is a mid-range handheld with a color screen, an SD/MMC slot, 16 MB of RAM, and Palm OS 4.1. News Editor Ed Hardy has had one for a few days and brings us this preliminary review.

Belkin has announced that it will soon be releasing the G700 Series Portable PDA Keyboard. When open, the G700 is a full-sized keyboard. However, its interlocking design allows it to fold up. This is the first keyboard to directly support Sony's T series. There will also be a version for Palm's Universal Connector. The G700 series will be available June 24 for $80.

Possibly answering the prayers of many Palm users, SyChip is developing an 802.11b SDIO card. It will be able to do both peer-to-peer networking and connect to network access points. The company is writing drivers for both the Palm OS and WinCE. SyChip hopes to have the design process finished, a prototype made, and the software written by the end of this year.

Palm Inc.'s interim CEO Eric Benhamou said yesterday that his company plans to introduce three new handhelds this fall, covering a range of prices and features, according to ZDnet.

One is a smartphone that runs the just completed Palm OS 5. It has long been rumored that Palm will release in the second half of this year a model capable of handling both wireless voice and data, though until now the company has only said it will release devices with wireless capabilities.

At the CIBC World Markets investor conference yesterday, Handspring CEO Ed Colligan said his company has seen more demand for devices with built-in keyboards than it has for ones that use Graffiti, according to a report in Cnet. This has led company executives to an important decision. "We'll go forward with keyboard-based color products," Mr. Colligan said.

Palm interim CEO Eric Benhamou said yesterday that worldwide sales of handhelds will grow only 10% this year, which is lower than industry analysts have said. Palm announced last month that it wouldn't meet its sales goals for this quarter and blamed the shortfall on slowing worldwide demand for handhelds. Mr. Benhamou predicted that analysts, once they have had a chance to look at sales figures for the first part of this year, will lower their expectations for handheld sales growth, too.

Palm has expanded their giveaway of the Shortcuts to Success expansion card to include the m500 and the silver m505. The program seems to be no longer available for the m125, and is not available for the m515. -Terry Salmi

CompUSA is now offering refurbished Visor Edge units on its webstore for $120. -Terry Salmi

The cost for a single employee to own a handheld can be $3000 a year, according to Gartner Dataquest. But according to the Gantry Group, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) each year for a Palm OS handheld is just $455 and $775 for one running Pocket PC.

TCO is more than just the cost of the hardware. It also includes software, training, tech support, and other factors.