Palm Foleo Revealed

[Chaszmyr]

Surely this is a joke. This is one of the worst big product announcements I've ever seen. No offense to Arn, but I can't imagine much of any sort of situation where you would need a product to perform a task and this would be the best thing available to you. The closest I could come would be people in college who want to take notes in class, like I've seen some people do with various portable devices other than laptops. But in that kind of a situation, you have a big bag with you anyway to put your books in most of the time, so its not so much harder to have something like a MacBook. I mean sure, it's less expensive than most portable computers (far less expensive than Sony's ultra portables, and a fair amount less than most UMPCs), but I think it's also just less powerful, and has nothing to really recommend it. You can't fit it in your pocket, which is the main selling point of the iPhone, so why would anyone buy this over something like a UMPC? Okay, sure it has a full size keyboard for faster typing, but they make fold out keyboards that could probably serve that purpose about as well. And WHY does it pair with a smart phone? Why didn't they just put 3G or EDGE parts in it and have it connect to the network itself? Did they assume everyone has a smart phone with them anyway? If I were going to carry something this size with me, I'd want the smallest phone I could find to put in my pocket, which obviously would not be a smart phone.

 

[andiwm2003]

Surely this is a joke. This is one of the worst big product announcements I've ever seen. No offense to Arn, but I can't imagine much of any sort of situation where you would need a product to perform a task and this would be the best thing available to you. The closest I could come would be people in college who want to take notes in class, like I've seen some people do with various portable devices other than laptops. But in that kind of a situation, you have a big bag with you anyway to put your books in most of the time, so its not so much harder to have something like a MacBook. I mean sure, it's less expensive than most portable computers (far less expensive than Sony's ultra portables, and a fair amount less than most UMPCs), but I think it's also just less powerful, and has nothing to really recommend it. You can't fit it in your pocket, which is the main selling point of the iPhone, so why would anyone buy this over something like a UMPC? Okay, sure it has a full size keyboard for faster typing, but they make fold out keyboards that could probably serve that purpose about as well. And WHY does it pair with a smart phone? Why didn't they just put 3G or EDGE parts in it and have it connect to the network itself? Did they assume everyone has a smart phone with them anyway? If I were going to carry something this size with me, I'd want the smallest phone I could find to put in my pocket, which obviously would not be a smart phone.

i think that thing is for people who always have their treo with them. then they do a trip across town to a client. they just grab the foleo and finish a few documents, answer emails, read a contract, check the powerpoint slides. no need to bring a clunky macbook that makes a big boing when they start it up. the foleo is always around but you don't use it all the time. when you do daytrips to meetings from boston to NYC you carry your treo and your foleo which is much less hassle than a notebook with all the airport security. its a work notebook for light office stuff, not a notebook to edit pictures and listening to itunes. i can see the niche. the real probelm is that a 12inch ultralight macbook pro or similar pc's could kill it. but then these notebooks will cost $2500

 

[Cameront9]

who the heck says that it has anything to do with iphone?? shut the **** up! please! are you mostly 12 and under?

Uhh...Maybe the CEO of PALM, inc, who said that they wanted to eventually have the iPhone work with this device?

 

[hulugu]

So when you are at the grocery store, you will bring your Vaio with you to accept calls? And when you are at the amusement park, you want the phone-Vaio with you?

Foleo at first glance seems "boring"... but Palm has a good idea here.
iPhone is too big for a phone and the screen is too small for real use.

So allow people to carry whatever bluetooth phone they want (ie razor) which they can fit anywhere for phone purposes. When they travel, they bring Foleo.

As far as the "not a real laptop" issue... let's be real. 95% of what people use their laptop for is 1) internet 2) email 3) MS Word 4) calender/contacts 5) excel 6) powerpoint 7) pdf 8) pictures
This will approach 99% as all apps start becoming web-based.

So for 1/4 the price of a subnotebook, this might be a very useable device.

It may be substance over style with no multitouch, no touchscreen, no "neat-o" feature.... but business users may love this thing. (By the way, I am not sure why people make such a big deal over multitouch. Resizing photos looks cool, but once the coolness wears off......)

I'm just not sure there's a niche to exploit here. Essentially it's a UMPC, but with a clam-shell design and those haven't been flying off the shelves. The idea does make a certain sense for the traveling executive, who could use full-featured desktops at either end and use this device to lighten their travel load. And, the device could work well at home in the same way that Nokia's 770 internet tablet should. But those are two narrow niches, Palm is taking an interesting risk here.

As for multi-touch, I've only watched SJ play with the thing on-stage, but I love the use of gestures to make things work. Being able to scroll through your iTunes library or type out a message should be much easier when you're using your fingers. We'll have to see.

Oh, and what's the deal with the - over the e in Foleo? Folio is pronounced foel-e-oh. What's Foleo? foel-E!-oh.

Random puncuation.

 

[BiikeMike]

Well, The folio does look useful to a LOT of the people I work with, and it's probably WAY more stable than a PC.

But Palm has been doing some really weird things lately, like selling!

This morning truth is stranger than fiction. Palm announced a strategic stock sale to private equity firm Elevation, a five way partnership between musical genius Bono, Apple iPod pioneer Jon Rubinstein, and three other executives.

Linky