Casio announced the Cassiopeia Pocket Manager BE-300, a US$299 PDA that's based on Embedded Windows CE, but uses its own suite of software. The BE-300, which will ship in September (Casio expects to ship half a million during their current fiscal year) and is aimed at business professionals who need robust Windows connectivity but not necessarily the "Pocket PC" suite of software apps. See Pen Computing's preview of the BE-300.

Symbol Technologies announced the PPT 2800, a second generation rugged Pocket PC that can be equipped with bar code scanning, and a variety of radio options including 802.11b wireless LAN and Voice-over-IP. Unlike the initial PPT 2700 rugged Pocket PC, the new 2800 model is based on a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor. See press release.

Sony announced three new Clie PDAs. The two PEG-N610 models (two because they are available in silver and violet) look like the recently released top-of-the-line Clie N710C, but cost less (US$399.99) and have no audio. Interestingly, they feature a 64k color screen instead of the N710C's 256 color screen. The US$199.99, 4.3 ounce PEG-S320 features the new look of Sony's Clies, but comes with only a 160 x 160 monochrome display. The new models are based on Palm OS 4.0 (the 710 comes with 3.5.2).

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)