Handspring executives are scrambling to persuade others not to follow in Siegal's footsteps. Indeed, founders Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky are personally replying to E-mails from irate consumers. Their problem stems from the gadget's popularity. The young company, headed by the same folks who designed the Palm, positioned the Visor as an affordable and more versatile alternative to the popular digital assistant. But Handspring underestimated demand.
Customers buying now can expect to wait four to six weeks on average.
Some customers were either inappropriately charged state sales tax or asked to pay for units they didn't order. To add to its woes, Handspring also has technical problems with some models of its hot new product. Handspring is still investigating the problems, several of which the company is trying to fix by being more explicit with customers about the Visor's capabilities. Syncing snafus can also occur if former Palm users do not completely uninstall their Palm software and overwrite it with Handspring's own installation software. The software bugs could explain why some users are unable to hook up to the Microsoft Outlook program.