Handspring, the developer of Palm OS-based Visor devices, would present an even greater threat to Palm Pilots if it decided to create Linux-based, Palm-compatible appliances.

According to Ken Dulaney, research area director at Gartner, Handspring has already taken 25 per cent of Palm's share of the personal digital assistant (PDA) market and would be an even stronger force if it created a cult following based on Linux.

"Palm is under attack. The Pocket PCs have better colour and Palm has been too caught up in its initial public offering," Dulaney told delegates at the Gartner Symposium this week. Palm's strategy to license Palm OS to third parties, such as Handspring, is good but it could backfire if Handspring somehow combined the Palm platform with Linux, he added.

Elsewhere in the PDA market, Dulaney believes that the latest version of Microsoft Windows CE boasts better real-time features and could be seen as a serious contender. However, its weakness is the industry's anti-Microsoft sentiment, and the relatively small number of supported applications.

But on the other hand, CE's strength is that it is backed by Microsoft's huge infrastructure and has been well accepted by industrial users, added Dulaney.

He noted that relatively unknown US company Research in Motion had created a cult following with its Blackberry wireless email device, but is limiting itself by insisting that its operating system remains proprietary.

Because of this, Dulaney advises corporates to refrain from installing Blackberry email servers and to buy generic email servers that support multiple devices instead.

He also said that users should be wary of the potential for PDA viruses, especially if 'beaming' features become widely used. He cited a US TV advertisement that shows a man and a woman sending each other's business cards to their respective Palms, and joked that users should be careful that such activity does not introduce a new form of sexually transmitted disease. "You don't know what else gets beamed," he said.

In the laptop world, Dulaney said that the shelf life of systems will be extended to between 30 and 36 months as Intel brings out higher performing processors, and that they will soon ship with internal antennas and integrated ethernet support as standard.

Video capabilities will be top priorities for manufacturers over the next few years, and integrated cameras could be standard features, he said.

Notebooks weighing over 6lbs will be phased out and mainstream laptops weighing between 4.5lb and 5lb will gain ground as desktop alternatives when used with docking stations or port replicators.