Today's Rampant Speculation: $150? Thin Supply? 6

What, you thought we'd let you go a day without speculating on the latest rumors flying into PreCentral.net HQ?  For shame.  Today's rumor-mongering is Page 2 type of material, so get your salt shaker out -- you're going to need a few grains.

Today it's about price.  Specifically, that $150 price point that we heard about last week is starting to feel a little less pie-in-the-sky and a little more, well, possible.  A Sprint employee lets us know that during an all-hands meeting wherein they were not told the Release Date (because, honestly, nobody seems to know that) beyond "soon,"  they were told the price would be "*very* competitive." 

That's the good news.  The somewhat iffy / bad news: The Sprint insider also said he was told that stock was going to be pretty tight for the first few months and employees were asked/told to basically hold off getting a Pre of their very own until things settled down.  Seems reasonable, but also sounds like we could be looking at some tight inventory levels.

We know: you want to know the date.  Us too. Frankly, we're still not feeling May 17th is a strong contender right now.  Signs point to 'later.'  The main issue that that the reports coming in are too varied  for us to hazard another guess.  As usual, a very poor signal:noise ratio. If there was any doubt that Palm Pre Silly Season has reached a frenzy, get this: people are resorting to spoofing @palm.com email addresses (as Jason posts one he received here) to try to get in on the hot hot rumor action.