U.S. Robotics palm reduced the suggested retail price of Pilot, the line of handheld connected organizers designed to work as companion products to a desktop or laptop computer, for the holiday season.

The Pilot 1000 will carry a street price of $249, down from $299, and the Pilot 5000 will carry a street price of $299, down from $369. Created by U.S. Robotics to be the first connected organizer, the Pilot family of products is designed to meet the needs of PC users who want to manage their activities both remotely and at their desktops.

Unlike other handhelds, PDAOs and organizers available today, Pilot automatically synchronizes its information with a personal computer at the touch of a button. Pilot also features shirt-pocket size, instant response, and an elegant graphical user interface. A comprehensive suite of personal information management (PIM) software including date book, address book, to-do list, calculator, and note-taking applications along with a companion desktop PIM, connectivity software and an innovative desktop cradle, are all included with Pilot for a breakthrough price of $249.

"We believe that Pilot is a practical gift that any business person could use and anyone would love, and this price reduction makes Pilot an even more compelling value for holiday gift giving," explained Ed Colligan, vice president of marketing of Palm Computing, Inc, a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics. "Our retailers and reseller partners have had great success with Pilot this year, and this new holiday season price should make this a rich selling season for Pilot."

Pilot is distributed through leading consumer electronics and office supply stores nationwide, including Circuit City, CompUSA, Computer City, Egghead, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, and other fine retailers.

Pilot includes a complete suite of PIM applications in addition to broad compatibility with existing PIM software to accommodate users' existing PIM applications and data. Many popular applications are supported, including Ascend, from Franklin Quest Co.; IntelliSync, from Puma Software; Lotus Organizer; Microsoft Schedule+; Now Up-to-Date, from Now Software, Inc.; Day-Timer Organizer 2.0 PIM, from Day-Timer Technologies; SideKick, from Starfish Software; and others. Synchronization links for third party PIM software are not included and may have to be purchased separately.

Pilot is based on the Palm Operating System (Palm OS), a handheld computer operating system platform that enables low-cost, low power, small form-factor devices to integrate with desktop personal computers. It is partitioned into two parts: highly efficient operating system software for the handheld; and Windows- or Macintosh-based software that manages synchronization of the handheld and the PC.

The Pilot 1000 unit supports 500 addresses, one year of appointments, 100 to-do items and 50 memos, or any combination thereof. The Pilot 5000 supports five times as much data. A memory upgrade option that supports up to 10,000 records is also be available for $99. The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 models are available immediately for PCs running Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 and will be available in the near future for Macintoshes running Systems 7.1 or greater. The French and German versions of both the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 are available now. For further product information, customers can contact U.S. Robotics at 800/881-7256.

Return to today's headlines

Copyright 1997 - 2008
GVP.DSJ Inc Web Development & GetMeOnTop SEO & Search Optimization NYC