The super-palmtop is called JEDI and combines laser rangefinding, GPS satellite positioning, a satellite phone and text messaging [New Scientist]

"JEDI is a lot more robust, he says. To test quite how much the gadget can take, the Army had a game of football using a JEDI as the ball - and it worked just fine afterwards."

Now THAT is product testing. it is good to know that they developing tech to help keep our soldiers alive, though I wonder what safeguards there are against it falling into enemy hands.

Battlefield technology has been an interest of mine since I read Firefight 2000 (Hmm, new cover has it as Firefight Y2K) back in high school. This UberPDA should be a big boost, as long as it's transmissions are secure, and untraceable. I'd hate to see someone getting shelled because an enemy can triangulate their location by pinging their PDA.