New PDAs will communicate more with the Internet wirelessly.
Instead of downloading entire Web pages to your PDA, Palm
devices use a process called Web clipping to slice out
bits of text information and send the text through the
airwaves to your PDA.
For example, say that you want to get a stock quote from
an online broker such as E-Trade. You tap the E-Trade
icon, fill out a form on your PDA listing the ticker symbol
and tap the Send button. Your text query is sent via a
data packet-paging network to an Internet server. Software
on the servers searches the E-Trade site, then transmits
the answer back to your PDA. News headlines, phone numbers,
e-mail and other information can be transmitted in the
same way.
Eventually, PDAs will merge with cell phones and use
a cellular network to communicate via voice as well as
text. It is also likely that PDAs will become faster and
have more memory as computer technology advances. Intel
has announced a new microprocessor called Xscale that
can run at 1 GHz and draw power from a single AA battery.
