Palm has Pre mature discharge and nobody notices. Verizon needs Palm, or at least, a slap on the wrists. It is all phoney in the USA. Joes can't get a fair shake.

the hype from the ipod and the hype that preceeded the iphone launch.

Just how much hype and excitement are journo's going to have for a "Palm Pre"?

Palm might have the better single product, but they don't have the hype machine that apple do. And Palm didn't just have a product storm around the world revolutionising mp3 players and people actually paying for music.

What have Palm done lately? It will probably be a nice product, but stuck in it's own bubble.

Oh wait, Dell's prototypes were rejected by carriers! :x

Even if Dell has smartphones in the pipeline they are very likely another bland iteration of windows mobile or Android. The market is saturated with such devices. Palm represents an opportunity to hit the market with arguably the first real Iphone competitor. Palm's WebOS could represent a whole new ecosystem for dell across many small form factor devices. Dell could use this as jumping off point to mirror Apple's IPOD/Iphone/(possible)Netbook ecosystem and the way they are closely tied to Apples own computers.