Palm Foleo, meh.
Well, huh. Palm brings the world the Foleo. It seems to be a laptop. Well, a subnotebook really. A laptop that runs linux. That is “the most exciting product I have ever worked on” that Jeff Hawkins has ever worked on is laptop that runs linux.
Palm may not be aware, but there have been many laptops produced in the past couple years. Granted, most don’t come with Linux, but there are many people who install linux on their laptops. This machine is also heavier and with worse battery life than my now several year old and discontinued (but dearly loved) fujitsu lifebook p1120 and my fujitsu even has a touch screen thrown in.
Palm may also not be aware, but a laptop using a treo as a modem is really great but the mobile carriers are preventing that from happening. Otherwise, we’d have been able to do this all along…
Also, Palm may not realize, but there’s a few laptops out there now that can read Office documents! Yes, it happened recently, but this company microsoft sells software that allows you to read these documents and edit them, too! In addition, some of these laptops also offer the ability to “browse the web” - some use a similar “opera” technology, others use a fire fox or an internext explorer. When using these interwebs, there is a small company called Google that also allows you to read and edit some of these office documents.
Synchronization architecture? Come on! Unless they’re saying that if I’ve got this thing in my backpack on standby mode I can still run applications off of it on my treo and store things from my treo on this thing (i.e. it behaves like an SD card for extra storage) then sure it’s cool and all, but innovative and revolutionary this definitely isn’t. If that was the case and this Foleo becomes a storage and processor hub for other devices (an idea Scott suggested years ago), like mp3 players and phones and whatever, that’s genuinely revolutionary but if that’s the case the whole release should have been talking about that, not talking about the scroll wheel.
I can’t even make this up:
The Foleo mobile companion’s hardware design features elegantly clean lines and forgoes excessive latches and connectors. An innovative scroll wheel, clever forward and back buttons, and a convenient track point enable easy navigation without requiring the user’s hands leave the full-size keyboard.
Look at pics of this, it looks like the old Apple duos. Latchless? Apple’s been doing that forever. Scroll wheels? Extra buttons? Track point? Sure these are all nice features, but innovative it is not.
In all seriousness folks, either I’m missing something or else Hawkin’s and all of Palm are completely bonkers. I think I remember win mobile in like 98 offering subnotebooks with instant on and fast access to applications (i.e. the Clio, which had a lot of the bullet points that the Foleo has except it was available in 1999, touch screen and a folding top so you could use it like a tablet). I don’t see anything coming close to a revolution here. Someone please enlighten me. I am currently totally disillusioned - someone, anyone please re-illusion me.
UPDATE: There’s two things that the optimist in me highlights. The Linux OS could be the linuxified version of Palm OS and this could start appearing on Treo’s near you. That’d be something, although why they’d choose to reveal that on a laptop is a little odd. The other thing is that if it works like a laptop and not a crippled laptop, then $500 for a subnotebook is pretty cheap. I paid just north of $1k for my p1120 and thought I was getting a deal. That’s it, still no revolution, but possible things that might make this not a complete disaster.
UPDATE 2: Wow. It doesn’t do flash video. Or in Hawkins’ own words:
JH Let me be clear—:it will do it, but not well.
WM When?
JH UHHH…In the future.
This device gets lamer and lamer. What’s the opposite of revolutionary? Backwards-in-time-ary? Devolutionary? Something like that.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I would seriously consider finally dropping my Treo if only there was something else that appealed to me. The iPhone is nice and all but I can wait for iPhone 2. I was even considering the Treo 680, but not for $400. Maybe it’s time to go back to Sony-Ericsson for the time being.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Yeah, my 650 is frustrating more and more these days. What with the slowness and the inability to do more than 1 thing at a time. If the Helio Ocean was a GSM phone there’s a pretty good chance I’d switch to it, although, it probably doesn’t support ssh which would be a tragedy. Sadly, I think I’m stuck on this phone till iPhone G2 arrives. I don’t see anything on the other makers that will offer good functionality, yet.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
The price is ok, but also remember that you also have to be a Treo owner (at least for now) to fully use the thing. So slap on another $200+ minimum if you wimp out and switch cell providers or something.
However, the damn thing can’t view video well. VIEW VIDEO. You can’t be a semi-competent laptop in this day and age and drag yer ass when viewing freakin’ VIDEOS.
At best it’s just another toy for hackers to try to figure out how many different ways they can hack the thing. Any way you look at it the audience for this thing is gonna be small. Palm needed something to appeal to the masses and this definitely ain’t it.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
“Palm officially out of ideas, debuts 1990s palmtop concept”
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-palm-officially-out-of-ideas-debuts-1990s-palmtop-concept.html
ouch.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Ben, yeah at least the hackers won’t have to have the thing that they all do where they vie to see who can load linux on random equipment first. :)
Howie, yeah, man… it’s disappointing. The Clio was cooler than this one, too. So really, it’s worse than a 1990’s palmtop.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:18 am
[...] with the big announcement of the Foleo yesterday I spent some time thinking about Palm. This is a company that I really loved and backed [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 11:04 am
[...] in all the hubbub over the Foleo, I didn’t say anything about Microsoft’s Surface - their multitouch tabletop computer. [...]
June 13th, 2007 at 10:38 am
[...] At least that’s what I thought at first, but then I realized, that no, that’s not why - actually it seems to be that at Palm they firmly believe that buttons = innovation! That blog post was the first hint, but then Hawkins delivered the proof with the Foleo. It’s the only thing that makes sense - he hyped that thing and pauses to talk about how awesome the extra buttons they added to the Foleo are! Sure it’s underpowered and can’t really do everything a laptop can and isn’t particularly lighter than other laptops - but they’ve added some buttons and a scroll wheel! [...]
July 4th, 2007 at 8:39 am
[...] anyway, Palm’s got this whole Foleo thing happening (I know I’ve talked a lot about the Foleo before) where they’re touting the Foleo as this revolutionary new [...]