Microsoft Europe Product Manager Greg Levin told Reuters that smaller and cheaper products using Windows CE software would be successful in the handheld market.

We’re going to be off-site at a trade show on Monday. News will resume on Tuesday, March 30, 1999.

The Gartner Group sponsored the Spring Symposium/ITxpo 99 this week in San Diego. At the event, Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm organizer and Jonathan Roberts, Microsoft’s group director for market development agreed that while handheld devices are here to stay, they will not take over the PC.

Here’s an article from Network Computing which explains how handheld devices are used on the ski slopes in Vail, Colorado. The devices allow Vail ski instructors to sign up students at the base of the mountain, while rental agents meet skiers outdoors and scan their returned boots, skis and poles.

Eclipse International recently announced the advanCE System Design Package (SDP), to develop Microsoft Windows CE-based embedded systems, information appliances and mobile computers. Fully compatible with the Microsoft Windows CE Platform Builder development system, the design packages include complete documentation to develop new products with minimal effort or prior knowledge of Windows CE.

Info Lighthouse Corporation (ILC) has released a service called “Sports On The Go” that provides user-specified sports content for both Palm computers and Windows CE devices.The “Sports On The Go” web content can be viewed with AvantGo’s AvantGo version 1.1, 2.X and 3.X (when available), Microsoft’s Mobile Channel Viewer, as well as a typical web browser.

Hrere’s an article from News.com about the latest Windows CE releases from Casio and Philips. The Cassiopeia from Casio supports full-motion video along with MP3 audio. Philips’ Nino 500 series has a 320-by-240 resolution backlit color screen and 16MB of memory.

PC World has this review of Iomega’s Clik drive for handheld PCs. According to the article, the $10 disks hold about 40 MB of information and could be an alternaive to CompactFlash cards.

CNN Intereactive has this story from InfoWorld about how IT managers can’t ignore the handheld computing platform. However, some IT managers are not happy about this because handhelds are difficult to synchronize with corporate servers.

Hasbro has released Trivial Pursuit and Slingo for palm-size and handheld Windows CE-based platforms. GameSpot Magazine reports that Monopoly and Scrabble for Windows CE are slated for release at the end of March.