I believe that I will finally succumb and purchase a Palm Pilot.  At the moment, the Palm V is the front-runner; the Palm VII is likely to be upgraded or improved upon by HandSpring or someone else, so I'll hold off on purchasing a "Webable" Palm (Webable is my new term for items that can be adapted to interface with the Web.  One might ask, is that item Webable or is it strictly local?).  The four vendors that I am considering are Onvia.com ($294.95 with free ground shipping), eCost.com ($289.99 with free ground shipping), Computers4Sure.com ($299.99) and Outpost.com ($299.95 with free next day shipping).  At the moment, each has the item in stock.  I do not need the item right now, so I could go with the eCost.com as they would provide the lowest final cost.  The next day delivery option offered by Outpost.com, however, is cool -- who said this has to be an entirely rational purchase experience.  If I were to order this product by midnight tonight Eastern Standard Time, the product would show up at my door tomorrow; that's cool.  Necessary?  No.  Cool?  Yes.  Will he or won't he?  The night is still young (at the moment, as I type this, it is 7:30 pm).  By the way, 3Com is offering some freebies on Palm V purchases made between now and February 7, 2000.   One can get either a free personalized leather cover or a rebate of up to $50 if one buys any Palm Organizer and the Corex Area Code Fix software (this rebate information was available at Buy.com).. 

Incidentally, if you are looking for low price, I may have outperformed bottomdollar.com and  DealTime.com.  Both bottomDollar and DealTime listed a price of $269.00 from Buy.com. (My own initial search of Buy.com revealed a price of $299.00 -- ?)  If you link through either bottomDollar or DealTime to Buy.com's Palm V "product page," the price listed is $299.00 (which is what I found, at first). Weird.  If you go directly to Buy.com and request a list of all PDA's, the price listed for the Palm V is indeed $269.00 (aha).  If one links from this Palm V listing in Buy.com to the Palm V "product page" within Buy.com, one sees a listed price of $299.00.  Buy.com has an error somewhere and hopefully the benefit of the doubt goes to the consumer.  If the price is $269.00, then the total cost for a Massachusetts citizen would be $289.11 ($269.00 + $13.45 for tax + $6.66 for standard shipping), beating eCost by an impressive eighty-eight cents (don't spend it all in one place).

I received my first shipment from Amazon.com this morning from USPS.  Excellent packaging.  Amazon used neat air bubble packaging.  They enclosed a $10 off coupon for my next purchase.

Diary Update -- Palm V Order Alert
At 10:54 pm this evening (Wednesday), I decided to go ahead and order the Palm V from Outpost.com.  My final price will actually be $290.95 because I linked through bizrate.com which offered a 3% rebate for purchases from Outpost.com (good thing I checked for the rebate).  In theory, the Palm V will arrive on Thursday.  This is cool.

My 17th favorite thing to buy online is fillet of salmon.