Taking the Palm and Windows Moble pulse of America's electronics retailers

I went on a mission. Call it CES - Woodland Hills. I wanted to see all there was to see in pocket-size computing. I wanted to try the latest Palm models as well as compare them with Windows Mobile devices.

Would the Microsoft-powered portables work as quickly and intuitively as the Palm? Would Windows Mobile's version of Word solve my "smart" quote and em dash problems?

And what about the latest from Palm? The E2, T/X and Lifedrive beckoned. I've only been using Ilene's Tungsten E hardcore for about three weeks, so it's my infancy/honeymoon with the whole Palm concept. The fact that I'm composing entire blog posts in Palm's Graffiti 2 script language with the E's metal stylus means I've either gone crazy or discovered the missing link in my own writing workflow.

How hard could it be to see all that is new in Palms, iPAQs and the like?And since Woodland Hills is a hotbed of electronics retail, I assumed my task would be an easy one.

Little did I know that the state of PDA retail would range from borderline adequate (Frys) through wholly deplorable (Best Buy) to suspiciously absent (Circuit City). Some of this could be due to the general withering of the PDA category, but much of it must be due to basic neglect by the manufacturers of their products' position and very presence in the retail arena.

HP, maker of the iPaq, could be focusing on desktop and laptop PCs, while Palm is moving toward becoming a cell-phone-only player.

Or it could be sheer incompetence and business-category suicide.

On my first trip to Frys, neither Windows Mobile-equipped iPaq was in working condition. All the Palms worked. That's when I discovered the LifeDrive's lag due to its reliance on a disk drive as opposed to memory to load applications. None of the Palms had a working Wi-Fi connection, something I very much wanted to test.

The cheapest Palm, the Zire, at $99, was dismaying after my weeks with the Tungsten E. No e-mail, a low-res, smallish screen, no Documents to Go -- what exactly was the Zire good for? The extra $100 for the Tungsten E2 is mandatory. The next $100 for the TX is strongly suggested. But the final extra $100 for the LifeDrive is ill-advised. The TX is the sweetest of spots in the Palm PDA line, though the E2 will do very well.

Briefly, because even I'm tiring of this entry, here's the rest of my search.

Circuit City: No PDAs at all.

CompUSA: The TX, Zire and E2 are all running. No PC-based PDAs are available for demo.

Staples: TX is running. Others not. No PC-based PDAs running.

Best Buy: Two Palms (TX and maybe LifeDrive) are behind plastic, barely seen. Not avaliable for demo. Prices ABOVE retail. No PC-based PDAs Smartphones have plastic "fake" screen and can't be demoed.

Second visit to Fry's: Two IPaq's are now running. Is there any provision for stylus-based writing? If not, there's not even a keyboard. What gives?

In the famous "smart quote" search, it appears the Word-like app on Windows Mobile devices does not do smart quotes. Since you can get them in any Palm application if you put them in a Shortcut (or use the Targus wireless keyboard), Palm wins the smart-quotes battle, hands (or Palms) down.