According to a study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), PDA owners tend to be wealthy, highly educated and mostly under the age of 55. Slightly over half are men. Over 93% have Internet access at home, while only 58% of the general adult population does.

Only 53% of respondents purchased the PDA for themselves, 27% received it as a gift, while another 20% received it from their company. Most people who buy their own PDA said it was to ”make life easier,” while only 6% said it was because they wanted the newest technology.

The first Internet World Wireless 2001 was this week and it didn't get much news coverage because no important announcements were made at it. Alan Kessler, Palm's COO gave a nice speech (which is available in Real format) on Palm's wireless plans but none of it was new. He basically rehashed information that had been covered at PalmSource and the Consumer Electronics Show.

Popular Science has an article on how sailors on the U.S.S. Constellation are using Palm handhelds to increase efficiency. -Ed

Qvadis, makers of Express Reader, are releasing the updated free Qvadis e-Book Sampler, now available from their recently-acquired e-publishing unit at Editio-Books.com.

According to a statement, "As of March 5th, 2001, Driveway will discontinue all Driveway.com file sharing and storage services." Obviously, this means that BackupBuddy users won't be able to make mirror back-ups or restore their files via FTP, which was built into the application. Blue Nomad is already revising BackupBuddy.

At yesterday's speech to the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council, Palm CEO Carl Yankowski told them, "Don't be a hardware company. The margins are very tough. Before you get into hardware, you want to be sensitive to the whole razors and blades thing."

He was referring to razor companies that sell the original razor with a very thin margin but make very high margins on replacement blades. He thinks of handhelds like razors; the original device can be sold with a thin margin because the real profit is in selling applications and services for those devices.

Robert Hanssen, the man recently arrested in the U.S. for spying for Russia, used a Palm handheld to transfer top secret information. According to the The Register, Hanssen entered his meetings with the Russians into his Palm. He also got tired of going to remote places to drop off his stolen materials and asked his Russian handlers if they would let him use a Palm VII so he could transfer the secrets wirelessly.

According to a statement from PumaTech, the ProxiWeb service is about to be shut down. "As of March 12, 2001 the ProxiWeb server will be deactivated." Instead, the company is urging all its users to switch to Browse-it, part of Intellisync.com, which is free during its introductory period. What it will eventually cost has not yet been revealed.

Novatel Wireless, maker of the Minstrel line of wireless modems, and Sprint PCS, the fastest-growing all-digital, all-PCS voice and data nationwide wireless network, today announced plans to release the Merlin Wireless PC Card, using Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology for Sprint PCS and a handheld solution for the Palm V series. The solution is a sleeve that will let the PC card work in conjunction with the Palm. No release date or price is available right now.

Iain Morris, the brand new head of Hewlett-Packard's new Embedded and Personal Systems group said in a interview with Cnet today that he is considering switching the Jornada from Pocket PC to the Palm OS. He is also considering using Linux.

The Jornada is one of the best selling Pocket PC handhelds but still has only 3.5% of the U.S. market, according to figures released this week by PC Data. Morris believes the device hasn't reached its full potential. "Jornada as a product has an opportunity to become more successful," he said.

Handspring will introduce the VisorPhone to the European market at 3GSM World Congress this week. They are now making it available to carriers for testing and expect to begin selling the product in Europe this summer.

VisorPhone is a 900/1900 MHz GSM world phone with Address Book dialing, enhanced caller ID, conference calling and more. It also offers full data services, allowing e-mail and SMS. Handspring also intends to provide its own Web browser, Blazer, developed by recently acquired Bluelark Systems.

TRG Products, maker of the TRGpro, is refocusing its efforts on selling its handheld. As part of this process, it is hiring more salespeople, having its engineers focus on improving the TRGpro, stopping its contract work for other companies, and even renaming itself to HandEra to better reflect its focus on handheld computer products. This news comes in a Des Moines Register article.

The company has already registered its new domain but the site just has the message "Coming soon... a new era in handheld computing". It isn't clear yet whether the handheld will also have a name change, though it seems likely.