Travel Technology - Tapwave Z2's at for £149 ($275)

If you're in the UK or coming to the UK and in need of a Palm based PDA (with handheld games console built in) then you could do worse than the Tapwave Zodiac range (yep all 2 of them). Especially as they are selling for silly money here, the Zodiac 1 can be had for £99 ($184) or the Zodiac 2 for £149 ($275) (available for $349.88 @ Amazon.com).

I'm told they are only sold by Currys, Dixons, PC World in this country but I'm told that the Z2's are on sale at the Dixons at LGW, (poss duty free) for just short of £130 ($240). Shame as I'd just bought one at £164.95 a week ago from Pcworld but never mind! I'll be at LGW next week (but flying in the EU only) so I'll have a look then, on the web try Dixons.co.uk (http://www.Dixons.co.uk) and then they're under computing (I would post a direct link but they use session id's :td: ).

The Z2 specs can be found here (http://www.tapwave.com/zodiac_specs.html) and the integrated bluetooth/IR/2 SD slots/ATI graphics/Yamaha Audio component etc. made my mind up, never mind that it had 128Mb RAM, whereas everything else had about 32MB. It blew most of the other handheld machines in the shop I bought it at, and all of them in the £150 price bracket, out of the water.

I should state that I have no financial interest whatsoever in Tapwave, or Palm, or the Dixons Retail Group (who own all of the above shops), and I usually find they're vastly overpriced, but in this case.....

Even though your exchange rates are a little unrealistic, they still seem much cheaper than here in the US. Over here they haven't manage to make much of a dent in the market, especially with the PSP arriving in 2 weeks I don't think we'll be seeing too much of Tapwave in the US market.

The UK on the other hand is looking much brighter for them, and after the massive faliure of the Nokia N-gage they might be able to sell quite a bit of them...

Oh, completely forgot why the Tapwave is so cheap in the UK.

In a weeks time the UK will be the launching country for the Gizmondo...

www.gizmondo.com

They are even opening a flagship store on Regent street to sell the device. It has the potential to kick away any chance of success the Tapwave has, with GPS and GPRS it is everything the Tapwave zodiac isn't, at least as a gaming device.

Even though your exchange rates are a little unrealistic, they still seem much cheaper than here in the US. Over here they haven't manage to make much of a dent in the market, especially with the PSP arriving in 2 weeks I don't think we'll be seeing too much of Tapwave in the US market.

The UK on the other hand is looking much brighter for them, and after the massive faliure of the Nokia N-gage they might be able to sell quite a bit of them...

Hmm, I used this (https://www.travelmoneyonline.americanexpress.com/ukc/transaction.asp?fic=aZx2mb56wWq0Ge9kLty3&trxn=normal) to work out the exchange rates. As for their success in the UK, I'm the only person I know who's got one and I bought it because of the PDA funtions combined with the massive memory, 2 SD slots, and the fact that it runs on Palm not Windows ^ . Some of the tech guys at work were suprised by how good the spec is for the price. I think the accessories/software are down in price too over here, I think they're heavily discounted.

I didn't really consider it for game play, I prefer the GBA, the Sony looks nice, but it's using proprietary formats and new tech, which puts me off. That usually means it will be a massive hit :D . Didn't like the N-gage because it had a mobile phone in it and I can't stand them, looks like the Gizmondo gets the elbow because of that as well, that and the smaller screen.

EDIT: Strangely I get:

Status : 403 Forbidden
Description : Organizational policies prohibit access to this page.
Note : If necessary, please contact your Systems Administrator for resolution.

from www.Gizmondo.com, I'll have to ask IT in the morning.