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When Asus announced the MyPal A730 Pocket PC with a VGA screen several months ago, the company said versions with (A730) and without Wi-Fi (A730w) would ship. For the last couple of months, however, only the A730 sans an 802.11b radio has been available in the United States.

This week, Asus U.S. reseller PROPortable received its initial shipments of MyPAL A730w Pocket PCs, sending them all out to those who preordered the eagerly anticipated handheld. brighthand reports a second shipment should arrive at PROPortable offices today. That means those who purchase the MyPAL A730 Pocket PC could conceivably receive them by the end of the week..

PROPortable sells the A730w for $600 and the A730 for $500.

MyPal A730

The MyPal A730/A730w are part of a trend towards new Pocket PCs with VGA (640 x 480 pixel) resolution displays. Toshiba was first out of the blocks with a VGA screen for its e805, while Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Fujitsu-Siemens all shipped VGA models this Fall.

Theoretically, VGA should let users view whole Web pages on a PDA without scrolling, for example. It also makes working on spreadsheets and word processor documents easier and more manageable on a small handheld display.

In addition to supporting VGA, the MyPal A730's screen measures 3.7 inches and displays 16-bit color, which translates into 65,536 colors. There is also an Intel 520MHz XScale CPU, 128 MB of RAM, both CompactFlash Type II and SDIO Secure Digital slots for peripheral and memory expansion, Bluetooth, as well as a 1.3 megapixel camera for up to 1280x960 resolution-sized pictures.

For more on the MyPal A730, see Review: Asus MyPAL A730 – Camera Sets Pocket PC Apart.