Palm Foleo coverage

[Bob Russell]

Take a look at Palm Addicts for coverage of the new Palm Foleo. It looks like a mini laptop, but it's a smartphone companion. 5hr battery life, instant on, and PalmOS on Linux. Seems to be aimed at MS Office documents and email and web browsing. Will eventually have more applications, and will work with more types of smartphones than just the PalmOS and WinMobile Treos.

It may have a while to go until is satisfies many users. Those that want a convenient form factor and reasonable price might be interested for email and document viewing or editing. But it's not a laptop or tablet pc replacement, so don't plan on doing heavy computing on it. Will it sell? I guess we'll find out over time.

Related: Palm Foleo - Will it be another step for e-books?

[dura]

Still having fond memories of my palm V and therefore having a soft spot in my heart for the company, I have to say I'm not very impressed. I love the fast start up, but I can do all that with my -hardly bigger- 12" MSI laptop, or with a -smaller- organiser with a BT-keyboard, and I do not see why this add anything to the origami/UMPC concept.
BTW I hate integrated keyborads; first to go and often have a tactile feedback not to my taste, I prefer stand alone keyboards.
It also seems to be aimed very much at Treo-owners, and I do not find Treo's particularly outstanding smartphones, prefering HTC-products instead. Just my 2 cts of course, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong and it will turn out to be a revolutionary product, but unless the specs and the promo are severely understated I fear this is not gonna be the renovation the Palmpilot and the Palm V gave us.