(FORTUNE Magazine) – I've moved a little closer to wireless nirvana. I've gotten my hands on OmniSky's Minstrel, a wireless modem for the Palm V. The Minstrel solves a problem identified by my fellow columnist Dick Shaffer, who agonized in the last issue that he was torn between his sleek Palm V and his wireless but bulky Palm VII. Now, by snapping this equally sleek add-on to my Palm V, I get the functional equivalent of the wireless Palm VII--without giving up the V's fashionable aesthetics.

Adding communications to the Palm V begins to answer an important question. Last year, when I reviewed the Palm VII, I wondered whether there really was any use for a wireless palmtop device. I complained that because of its small screen and the slow speed of its wireless modem, the Palm VII really didn't let you browse the Web. Instead, Palm was asking you to settle for something called Web clippings. These are specially prepared Web pages that have been stripped of graphics and that use limited text formatting. I was also forced to use Palm's network for e-mail, the last thing I wanted since I already have to check several e-mail accounts.

Things are looking up. OmniSky, a cellular data provider, has made several improvements to the Palm service. Now you can download and answer mail from your existing Internet accounts (although some finicky ISPs won't accept wireless calls), and a warning light tells you of pending messages. And so many providers have jumped on the Web-clipping format that you now have a wide range of services available. In addition, your choices have been widened by AvantGo, a popular Internet service that prepares information from thousands of sources for downloading (in this case wirelessly) into the Palm. It turns out that this nuggets-of-the-Net approach plays better with users than I expected. It's in tune with the way most people use the Net: for bite-sized chunks of information, such as the latest news headlines, stock prices, auction items, shopping, music downloads, and so on.

The Palm is still no substitute for your PC and modem. There's just not enough screen or bandwidth. With its glacial 19.2-kilobits-per-second modem, the unit clearly isn't suited for ordinary browsing. You can surf Web pages using AvantGo or a Palm-specific browser like HandWeb, but they let you see only small chunks of pages at a time, and much of the data is scrambled.

Currently in beta testing, the OmniSky Minstrel is scheduled to go on sale in March or April; final prices for the modem and service have not yet been set. But early adopters can buy the modem now for $299 (www.omnisky.com), and the service currently costs a flat $29.99 per month.

The modem adds heft to the Palm V, but the combo is still thinner and lighter than the Palm VII. Designed in the same brushed-metal finish that made the Palm V a fashion hit, the Minstrel mates with the Palm and doubles its thickness to 1w inches and its weight to just under nine ounces. Once altered, the Palm may no longer fit in a shirt pocket, but it is still very portable--and still looks good. You can always separate the modem from the unit with the push of a release button, but my guess is that most users won't want to split up this dynamic duo very often.

Because the OmniSky is still in beta testing, there are more bugs than I would normally find acceptable. The process for installing the necessary software on your Palm is slow, though not terribly difficult. Just make sure you have at least a full megabyte of Palm memory free before you start the procedure--a lot of software is installed during the 45-minute process of setting up the Palm for its new wireless life.

You should also check a map: The Minstrel uses a cellular technology called CDPD that is not available in much of the U.S. For now the areas around most large cities have the service, with Atlanta a conspicuous exception.

Still, if you live near a big city, your pumped-up Palm will allow you a huge range of popular features: You can send and receive e-mail, check your stocks or trade them, read the latest news from a wide variety of sources, find out whether your flight is late, order a book from Amazon.com, or find the nearest Starbucks in a strange city.

You might say that you can already do that with your PC or Mac. True, but you can't do it all from the beach or the bathtub--or in my case, from the back of a New York City bus. Mobility changes the nature of transactions. Having to wait until you get back to your office or home, or having to find a phone line when you want to connect to the Web, is a different experience from being able to reach into your pocket or purse and act instantly.

Now, as my bus chugged down Broadway, I collected results of English Premier League soccer games, amused myself with Liberation's latest alarm about American hegemony, and scanned headlines to make sure the Time Warner-AOL merger hadn't unraveled since I left home. The Minstrel-equipped Palm may not have offered all the options I would have had if I were at my desk. But I wasn't anywhere near my desk--and that was the point.