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You get battery efficiency, but lack the color depth of Windows CE devices.
This week Palm adds color to its line of personal digital assistants. But for $449, are 256 colors enough to make the jump?
The Palm IIIc resembles the Palm III, but has a color screen. It runs on a 20-MHz Motorola Dragonball processor with 8MB of memory. Its bright display lets users view images, play games, and read text easily. PC World took a close look at it, along with the upgraded operating system (see "Palm Gets Color, OS Upgrade," link at right).
The Palm IIIc offers 8-bit color with 160-by-160 pixel resolution, which is not great for photos. The IIIc's color range is limited by the fact that the device maintains the small unit size and long battery life typical of Palm products.
"The Palm IIIc is a baby step [towards color]," says Diana Hwang, research director of handheld devices at International Data Corporation. "Palm's color implementation doesn't use the full range."
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