The Palm VII was a

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...

made by the

Palm Computing Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 60 ...

division of

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...

. The device featured an antenna used for wireless data communication, a first for a Palm device. Connectivity was provided through the

Mobitex Mobitex is an OSI based open standard, national public access wireless packet-switched data network. Mobitex puts great emphasis on safety and reliability with its use by military, police, firefighters and ambulance services. It was developed in th ...

network, under the now defunct Palm.net service. Web Clipping applications, also known as Palm Query Applications (PQAs) made use of the network to request and post web data. The devices also provided PQA developers with the user's position, in the form of a zipcode, making the Palm VII the first web-enabled

Location-Based Services A location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, ent ...

mobile platform. The cost of service was $14.95 per month, and allowed a limited number of web pages to be viewed. The Palm VII was the most expensive Palm sold to date, with unit pricing starting at US$599. Despite the high price tag, the Palm VII proved popular as one of the first truly wireless data-capable information devices.

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