A major problem with open source medical software is its lack of applications for palmtops. This problem may be neutralized in the form of Linux based PDA’s such as Samsung’s Yopy and Compaq’s iPaq that have begun proliferating. eTown.com is reporting that Royal will be releasing low-cost Linux PDA’s ‘early next spring’ of 2001. Royal has competed with Palm Computing in the past with its daVinci line of PDA’s. While lower in price, a past eTown article notes that the daVinci has suffered from operating system feature shortfalls ‘…the daVinci operating system is not nearly as elegant, intuitive or sophisticated as Palm’s. Moving to Linux may change that as well as greatly accelerate software development.