These few examples are just the tip of the iceberg. We'll see a lot more ways that handheld computing will subtly change how we work. PCs will still be a key part of our working style. Yet Palm devices will integrate into that style, extending and enhancing the way we do our jobs. In fact, the integration with the PC is central to making handhelds work at work. Arguably, it was Palm's recognition of the PC by giving its devices their excellent HotSync capability that really made this category compelling.

In the same way that mainframe priests could have never predicted that their huge, monolithic altars to centralized computing would eventually evolve into a world of proletariat computing (and completely revolutionary applications like Photoshop), I'm sure we'll see handheld devices used in wonderful ways we can't predict today.

Stay tuned and have a great New Year!

Christine Harland Williams is President of Harland Communications and tracks handheld solutions used in the enterprise. She can be reached at ppme@harlandwebs.com.