Today's Release Date Rumor Mongering, May 17th Chances Waning?

Last week we were a little bummed to report that our longstanding best guess as the to Palm Pre's Release Date appeared wrong.  See, our guess went a little something like this: "As soon as humanly possible, organized PR be-damned, just get the thing out the door, maybe May 17th is possible."

Then we heard that Buzz-out-loud co-host Natali Del Comte knew the exact date.  So we were wrong.  But now we're right again, see, because Del Comte has chimed in during the latest episode (Jump to 29:25):

Well last week I went running my big mouth about the fact that I did know when the Palm Pre was coming out, but I wasn't able to say, and then I got an email from Palm and they said "The date you think it is is not right, we don't know yet, it's being changed."  So that's what I get for speaking out of turn.  So basically the answer is "We don't know, we thought we knew, and we don't."

Ah, bittersweet vindication.

More than the above, though, we're also heard from two anonymous sources that Palm has pushed back the final firmware update for shipping handsets.

Bottom line: While May 17th is still your earliest bet, it's increasingly looking like a moon-eyed optimist's bet.  But hey, we're moon-eyed optimists.  At least we know that Palm will make their First Half of 2009 target, only 72 days left in that window.