The Palm Pre is getting a lot of hype. Not as much hype as the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G but more hype than just about anything other smartphone. Just like the original iPhone the hype is a little unjustified, no one knows much about the Pre except what they could glean from a few demos at CES. That won’t stop the speculation because like the iPhone the Pre has a aluable name behind it. Palm is teetering on the edge of insovency but people still remember the glory days when Palm was cranking out PDAs that people couldn’t get enough of. If Palm can recapture that early magic then the Pre can be something special.

So how does the Pre stack up in the pre release smackdown? Avi Greengart who used the Pe for an hour had this to say:

It builds on Palm’s heritage of building the best personal information management devices. And they’re extending this beyond a single data store, to all the places [on the Web] where you have information, like LinkedIn or seven different e-mail accounts.

Sounds like a winner. PC World also covers the more perfunctory spec sheet comparisons (screen size and so forth) in the article.