The crux of this week’s ‘cast: GSM, the voice and data standard used the world over for mobile phones, is hopelessly flawed in a security sense and can be cracked in several different ways. The cost for the correct apparatus to crack the encryption: just a few thousand dollars. The expertise required: minimal. Read for yourself. Or here.

Granted, you probably won’t get your conversations spied upon, unless some enterprising Mines student with a wad of cash has nothing better to do and your T-Mobile or AT&T phone is not running in 3G mode at the time (though the latter can be forced). Still, it’s best not to have sensitive conversations over your non-3G phone (which includes the first-generation iPhone) if that non-3G phone is running off of AT&T or T-Mobile.

1. What’s the price? If it’s too much, nobody buys and Palm dies. On the other hand, there’s no such thing as too low. Hopefully Palm will price their product at $199, the same as the 8GB iPhone (the Pre has 8GB of internal memory as well). The problem is that the Pre isn’t an iPhone, and yetPalm may think their product superior enough to price it as high as $399 rumoor has it. $299 might work, $249 maywell be a good price, $199 is great…but $399? Not to Palm: you may be convinced of your product’s superiority…but you’re not Apple. Customers are the ones who need convincing, and subsidizing your phone heavily is one way to do that.
2. Where’s the memory card slot? That’s right, looks like the Pre doesn’t hae one. Granted, neither does the iPhone, and the Pre has a wwhopping 8 GB of internal storage, but still, when all other Palm products have SD or MicroSD cards, why not the Pre?
3. Is the keyboard decent? No, I’m not talking about a comparison with the iPhone’s touch screen. More along the lines of the Blackberry or some of HTC’s mobiles, like my own HTC Mogul. Hopefully Palm made the keyboard better than that of the Centro; the little chiclets on that phone’s face are just plain hard to type on.