Now that the University of South Dakota has provided PDAs to its students, geeky teachers must be having dreams of paperless classrooms, where handouts and visual aids are distributed quickly. But since schools and universities normally provide low to mid-range handhelds without Wi-Fi built-in, infrared (IrDA) is still the way to go for wireless transmissions.

By far the most useful product in Tri-Beam's lineup is their infrared broadcaster. A teacher can command the IR50 via Ethernet to beam information to all PDAs within an area. Tri-Beam also sells wheeled carts that facilitate the charging of up to 32 units, and one of them has a telescoping pole where you can mount the IR50. Only Palm and Dell PDAs are supported.

It seems only private institutions can afford such a setup. Even with a "limited time price reduction," the broadcaster alone costs $1,299.