Palm's game-changing Pre arrives June 6

Calendars were tentatively marked this week for something from Palm, and today we've found out what it was: the launch date and price of the Pre.

The eagerly anticipated Palm Pre is slated for availability on June 6, and will cost $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two year contract through Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and even Wal-Mart.

The CES "Best in Show" device is so hyped that Sprint includes a speedometer which gauges the number of times the Palm Pre is mentioned online. At 9:00 am EST, it was fixed on 9.47 million mentions. Not too bad for a company who, until this year, looked to be slowly fading out of the smartphone market where it once held a respectable position.

The company's last successful release was the low-price, low-margin Centro, which took a while to catch on, and eventually became a record-breaking product for the company. Unfortunately, because it was so low-margin, it could not pull Palm out of its money-losing position. Now Palm's future all hangs on the Pre. It's 18 days and counting...Are you getting one?