Since you've never used a Pronto, you've never seen its software (firmware). And you've never seen Pronto Edit. There's more than one reason a Pronto costs what it does.

You can also get original T1000 models much cheaper than the current colour models. Also, does the Palm do IR or IRDA?

If using a Palm or even a CE type machine, I'd rather go with an ethernet connection than serial. More expensive for sure, but a lot easier to customise an interface for (you can make them in HTML to run within a browser). Of course, if Mark were to make some sort of cool serial http implementation, that would be very cool.

Bruno