Handspring Inc. today announced price cuts on its entire like of monochrome Visor PDAs. The Visor Neo, Visor Edge and Visor Pro all have reduced prices.
Based on the Palm OS, Handspring’s Visor line is similar to Palm’s, but features Handspring’s vaunted Springboard expansion technology. Springboard modules enable the Handspring line to perform functions they couldn’t do on their own, such as digital cameras, cell phones, GPS tracking, and other functions. Springboard modules can also be used for external storage and other features.
The Visor Neo is Handspring’s entry-level PDA. The device comes in smoke, red and blue colors and utilizes the Motorola Dragonball VZ processor shared by other Visor PDAs. Equipped with 8MB of memory, the unit runs on two AAA alkaline batteries. Its price has been dropped $20, from $169 to $149.
The Visor Edge is Handspring’s slim model. Equipped with a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery, the Edge comes in silver, blue and red metallic chassis covers, and features a detachable Springboard slot that makes it compatible with all existing Springboard modules. The Visor Edge also comes with 8MB of memory and features a “fast top-off time” that enables the device to be charged within minutes of being docked in its charging cradle, according to Handspring. The Visor Edge has dropped from $199 to $169.
The Visor Pro also sports a rechargeable lithium ion battery, but it features 16MB of memory. The Visor Pro comes in a silver finish and a charging cradle that will also recharge Springboard modules that have their own internal battery. The price has been reduced on the Visor Pro from $229 to $199.
All three share a 4-bit grayscale screen and the same Motorola Dragonball VZ processor operating at 33MHz. They include enhanced software compared with their Palm counterparts, and ship with USB support and Mac OS compatibility out of the box. Handspring has not yet qualified its Visor PDAs to work with the OS X native Palm Desktop 4.0 release, although it does indicate that its own version of Palm Desktop 2.6.1 works in Classic.