Technology & You: Bulletin Board

A SLOWPOKE? NOT THE PDA

In response to the June 13 column on personal digital assistants, Ronald Millaron of Reston, Va., asks how fast the Motorola Envoy transmits data. The Envoy communicates at a relatively slow 2,400 bits per second. The reason, says Motorola, is that it couldn't cram a faster modem into Envoy's packed innards. But because most messages sent and received by PDAs are brief, the few seconds it takes to establish communications, either by phone or by radio, is generally longer than the actual transmission time.EDITED BY STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM