In what may be the biggest what-were-they-thinking story of the decade, Palm ships a product with operating system software by its competitor, Microsoft. A Forbes article sums it up: ‘…When Palm announced today that its new smartphone would run an operating system from Microsoft, it was the equivalent of Coca-Cola agreeing to fill its bottles with Pepsi…’ The tragedy of this story is not the usual Microsoft crushing a competitor with its monopoly, but how Palm, a company with a great product, has managed to destroy itself slowly over the years.

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PC Magazine has a mixed review of Sharp’s Linux-based Zaurus SL-5500 handheld the main negatives were some interface issues the reviewer didn’t like, but they thought the powerful hardware and loads of applications for it were great: ‘…In terms of hardware specs, the SL-5500 is on even ground with the best Pocket PC handhelds. Under the hood, you’ll find a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor, 64MB of RAM, a replaceable lithium-ion battery–which lasted more than three hours in our tests–and a 320×240-pixel reflective TFT screen. We were quite impressed with the color and sharpness of the 3.5-inch display…

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that PDA’s such as Palm and others may soon become as indispensible as a stethoscope: “Today when a patient sees his physician consulting a PDA, he may wonder what’s going on,” said Rosenbloom, an emergency room physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “But some day, the patient will wonder what’s happening if his doctor doesn’t consult a PDA.”