But here's where the confusion sets in. Ken Dulaney, a highly respected analyst at GartnerGroup (at http://www.gartnergroup.com), sent me a report entitled, "Can Blackberry replace your PC? We don't think so." In it, he took specific aim at the claims in the Goldman Sachs report:

…Claims of reduced acquisition costs or total cost of ownership become irrelevant: the two machines are simply not interchangeable. A Blackberry-only strategy will eventually lead to costly mistakes…

Readers weigh in on the laptop replacement issue
Our own, independent analysis here at PalmPower's Enterprise Edition supports the GartnerGroup concern. We believe that handheld devices are a fine adjunct for desktop and laptop computers but not a replacement. Further, we believe that handheld solutions need to be evaluated on their own very strong ROI merits, not simply as a cost-savings measure for those who don't want to buy more Windows machines. Additionally, we believe that the HotSync technology that ships with all Palm handhelds makes the Palm handheld more suitable than many of the other options for widespread integration into the technology smorgasbord that exists in most organizations.

We decided to go straight to the best possible source, so we asked you, our readers (most of you active Palm handheld users), what you thought about these issues.

As Figure A shows, we asked readers, "Has your Palm handheld replaced your laptop?" Nearly half of you said you use both. Interestingly, 23.9% said it had, mostly, while another 10.4% said "yes, completely."

FIGURE A

Has your Palm handheld replaced your laptop? Click picture for a larger image.

So then, in order to gain more clues, we decided to look more deeply into how you might be using your Palm handhelds. We asked, "Do you use your Palm handheld for email?" As Figure B shows, 52% of you said you use your Palm handhelds for email in one form or another. But, tracking with both GarterGroup's and our own analysis, none of you use it for all your email.

FIGURE B

Do you use your Palm handheld for email? Click picture for a larger image.

Finally, we looked at another application that's often associated with laptop use. We asked, "Do you use your Palm handheld as a word processor?" As Figure C shows, it turns out that 63.9% of you use your Palm handhelds as word processors either sometimes or regularly, myself included.

FIGURE C

Do you use your Palm handheld as a word processor? Click picture for a larger image.

Just for kicks, by the way, we asked readers of our sister publication, PalmPower, "Do you use a keyboard with your Palm OS handheld?" We were fascinated to discover that, as you can see in Figure D, fully 54.4% do use a keyboard either sometimes or regularly.

FIGURE D

Do you use a keyboard with your Palm OS handheld? Click picture for a larger image.

All told, the polling results confirm our analysis. Palm handhelds do much of what a laptop is capable of, but they're adjunct resources, not replacements.

How to determine your own cost
So just how much do these things cost and how can you begin to determine your ROI?