And, if that wasn't enough, the pure dominance of handhelds was emphasized during Mobile Focus and Digital Focus, an off-site exhibition held the night before the Expo. More than 100 exhibitors showed their wares, all geared toward Palm and Microsoft-powered handheld PCs, digital phones and digital photography. Although I found a lot of them to be repetitive, there's enough new applications being developed to satisfy anyone's appetite.

Be prepared for new mapping and global positioning tools for the Handspring Visor and the new Handheld PC. Also, Microsoft has announced it is developing a bunch of programs to make its small units act more like personal computers than personal digital assistants.

The big thing seemed to be remote access to email and the Internet using wireless and "connected" modems and the ability of these small wonders to connect to existing networks.

So, here are a few things to watch for during the next few months.Sensory Science and Iomega Corp. have joined forces to produced the new Click! MP3 player that uses 40 megabyte Iomega Click! disks, which are about the size of a quarter, to store and retrieve your favorite tunes. Called the MP2300, the new player is expected to debut in late July or early August. The big deal here is that you can purchase the 40-megabyte disk for less than $10, compared with the older 32 megabyte smart media used in other players that can cost a minimum of $50.

Compaq has designed a wireless networking system to work with its Ipaq handheld PC that can connect with existing networks to provide higher speed Internet access via cable and DSL modems. Although I found it tough to get used to having to scroll through megascreens to see pages I'm used to seeing as a whole on a computer monitor, I was impressed with the Ipaq's ability to upload complete web pages, including graphics.

Sony showed off the prototype of its new handheld unit based on the Palm PC operating system, which is expected to deal a devastating blow to Microsoft. Although its release is still a few months away, it drew a bevy of curious handheld fanatics to Sony's booth.

Xircom showed off its new line of ethernet, modem and wireless cards for the Handspring Visor. These, in addition to its acquisition of Wireless Application Protocol technologies from Omnipoint Wireless Technologies, should make it a company to watch as we become more reliant upon handhelds and digital phones for network, email and Internet access.

FirstHand from InfoWave Software, which gives WAP-enabled phones access to files created in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange, and WAP-enabled phones from Nokia and Ericcson, all make data access even more portable.

Of course these were only a handful of the gizmos and gadgets featured at the show, many of which I hope to be testing during the coming months.

And fear not PC users, I saw a few things to pique your interest from Plextor, Philips Electronics, SystemMax, InterVideo and Sony, although they were clearly overshadowed by their handheld bretheren. These included 12X CD writers, new surround-sound speaker systems, flat-panel analog and digital monitors, slimmer and faster notebook computers, and MPEG-3 and broadcast band video guaranteed to make older technologies obsolete.

Stay tuned!