This morning Sprint announced that the much-anticipated Palm Pre will go on sale on Saturday, June 6, and will cost $200 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Sprint will require a voice/data plan with the Pre.Well, now we know. The simple facts are that the Palm Pre, first announced during CES back in January, goes on sale just two days before the keynote address during Apple's WWDC. Will two days be enough to ring in strong sales over the weekend, or will people wait until Apple makes its announcements on Monday, June 8? I'd bet both Sprint and Palm are dying to know the answer to that question themselves.

According to Sprint, the Palm Pre will be available nationwide in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com. A new, two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan is mandatory.

If you are interested in the Touchstone wireless charger, that'll cost you an extra $70. The device lets you place the Pre on the charger without attaching any wires to the Pre itself. It uses inductive charging technology to transfer a charge to the battery.

The biggest draw for the Pre will be, of course, webOS, the brand-new mobile operating system from Palm. From the press release, "The Pre's dynamic 'activity cards' approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of information across multiple applications on and off the phone," said Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. "With social networking and messaging being so important to consumers, the device's new 'Palm Synergy' functionality -- which gives Pre the ability to automatically pull friends' contact details, messaging addresses and personal calendars from different applications online and on the phone -- will greatly simplify people's ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues the way they want."

Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.

It would have been better for both Palm and Sprint to get the Pre out in the market sooner. Launching it so close to the WWDC keynote is a mistake, in my opinion. Granted, they can't launch the device before it is ready, but even one week sooner would have helped them out a great deal.