News Editor Heather McDaniel and Managing Editor Denise Amrich have been on assignment at LinuxWorld for the past few days, hence the rather slow news coverage. In addition, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz’ primary machine decided to crash hard, so he’s been concentrating on reinstalling Windows (ain’t that fun) rather than updating news. Regular news coverage will resume on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Palm has announced, effective today, that their prices have dropped. Most interestingly, the Palm IIIe is now $149, a magical price point we’ve talked about before. Other prices: Palm IIIe handheld computer now $149, previously $179; Palm IIIx handheld computer now $229, previously $299; Palm V handheld computer now $329, previously $399; Palm Vx handheld computer now $399, previously $449; Palm VII handheld computer now $449, previously $499. Note also the use of “handheld computer”. This is a new way of describing the device straight from Palm’s PR firm.

Here’s something from ZDNet on how Linux is competing with Windows CE in the information appliance market.

Thanks to reader Doron Almagor for letting us know that Audible is selling the Compaq Aero 1500 and an audio package for $169 and $9.95 per month for twelve months.

Thanks to our readers for pointing us to the e-Holster. e-Holster is a wearable case to keep your cell phone, handheld device and pager in one place.

Synchrologic

miniMusic will introduce its BeatPad software for the Palm Computing Platform and an upgrade of the miniMusic NotePad application at the NAMM 2000 International Music Market being held at the LA Convention Center.

Thanks to our readers for pointing us to the e-Holster. e-Holster is a wearable case to keep your cell phone, handheld device and pager in one place.

We like to warn you of incidents of spamming by well-known companies. In this case, E*Trade, the online brokerage firm, spammed us with an offer to purchase a 400Mhz, 32MB Celeron machine with a rebate if we signed up to their service. As always, we don’t appreciate spamming and were especially disappointed that the PC E*Trade was promoting was so clearly last year’s configuration.

Our good friend Dave Winer is speaking at the World Economic Summit in Davos. He’s got some great candid pictures of the event, including, unfortunately, pictures of the police, armed with machine guns.