Halloween is barely over, but Palm has kicked off the holiday season already with a special promotion designed to showcase Palm’s dual-expansion architecture. Buy a Palm m125, m500 or m505 handheld, and you get a mail-in rebate for a free 16MB Panasonic Secure Digital (SD) expansion card and US$250 worth of coupons for additional expansion products.
The promotion starts today and runs through Jan. 7. Plus, Palm has lowered the price on its Palm m505 color handheld to $399; previously it was $449.
SD, or Secure Data, is a storage format similar to SmartMedia and Memory Stick. Though it can store up to 64MB, it’s smaller than both those formats.
Just as with the Visor’s Springboard slot, peripherals can be built to fit the SD specification, so the slot can accommodate devices such as MP3 players, GPS receivers and Bluetooth modules. Disks or peripherals that fit the SD specification can initiate events when you plug them in — another Springboard similarity. The difference from Springboard? Palm’s SD slot is so thin that it doesn’t add any bulk to the handheld. Also, the SD spec isn’t a proprietary format — a number of manufacturers use it for digital cameras, printers and MP3 players.
As part of its promotion, Palm is encouraging shoppers to try out the dual-expansion capabilities with in-store and sidewalk demonstrations across the country during “Demo Days,” which take place from early November to mid-December. In-store demonstrations will be held in 150 key retail locations in the top 25 metropolitan markets — although the company hasn’t given specific dates or locations yet.
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