Hardware: What with Palm’s eleventh hour dismissal of the Foleo, Zack Urlocker wonders just what features, size and shape would constitute the perfect lightweight PC. Palm did some things right with Foleo, such as choosing Linux as the OS. But others, namely positioning it as a so-called smartphone companion, were off-the-mark. “I think they should have aimed for a form factor much closer to the old Psion 5,” Urlocker explains. Columnist’s corner: Even though the wireless market is luring in impulse buyers and, once hooked, keeping them in large and long contracts, businesses need not take the bait. “I’m astonished that Executive Platinum frequent flyers, people who negotiate multimillion-dollar deals, put themselves at the mercy of wireless operators,” writes Tom Yager in Don’t settle for consumer rates. “Even a consumer who buys wireless phones and service from the Web, the mall, or the retail showroom is just begging to be treated like a sucker.” The solution? Yager offers tips on negotiating to get what you deserve. Notes from the field: The occasionally eerie Mr. Cringely chimes in today with four tales of tech terror. The BIOS from beyond the grave is one such yarn; voice menus of the living dead is another. The news beat: Oracle buys Bridgestream to get its employee role mapping software and, ultimately, add it to Oracle’s Identity Management suite. Cognos scoops up Applix for its performance analysis software, TM1, which it hopes will boost its own software’s ability to analyze financial data. And NEC debuts the Valuestar W water-cooled multimedia PC. Technology Industry