They'll roll into production after desktops. It will take at least a month before any of these products will be available for government purchase as Dell and others go through the process to get them onto General Services Administration schedule and other contracts. Compaq's PDA, the PC Companion, is so far available only on the open market, not on any of Compaq's federal contracts. We found Compaq's PC Companion an apt moniker. But the cigarette case-sized handheld acts like an extension of your desktop.
Companion runs from two AA batteries.
Compaq says to expect about 20 hours of run time. It worked for us about a week of normal use before dying. Compaq offers optional rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and even a cradle to maintain charges and automatically sync with the desktop. Here's where we encountered a problem. We lost all data.