Quote:
|
Originally Posted by nathanwms
My main issue with the Foleo is the price. It's hard for me to justify paying $600 (minus $100 rebate) for a Foleo when I can get a Kohjinsha ultra-portable, 7 inch screen swivel screen, Win XP, BT 2.0, 802.11G, built-in keyboard, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, SD, CF, Video out, 2 USB for $691 through Conics.net .
I know some people don't need all the extra ability, but a $299 Foleo would have much better appeal against competition, which has more features and not much more in price.
I also think it was a mistake developing a variant of Linux that does not allow me to take advantage of the thousands of available open-source Linux applications. I'm not a Linux guru, but I believe it would have been just as easy to reduce unnecessary features and scale Linux down (like say Damn Small Linux) but still able to use quality Linux applications. Then they could design the Foleo to be instant-on and write the custom features to allow the one-touch syncing without crippling Linux in the process.
Foleo is in my estimation a good idea but poor execution. Unless Palm does something soon, I believe the market (UMPCs, MIDs, Ubuntu Mobile/Embedded Linux, Redflag Midinux, etc) will make the Foleo irrelevant.
|
I've read that the Foleo uses a standard 2.4.21-rmk1-pxa1-intc2 kernel, built for Intel PXA27x XScale processors. From a developer perspective, the kernel is less relevant than the desktop environment being used, of which at present we have zero details. I expect the OS (i.e. the whole platform, not just the kernel) to have some proprietary middleware, not unlike OS X. I expect the SDK to use some dual-license toolkit similar to QT.
I'm fine with the price, though less is always "more" from a consumer perspective. As a former Psion Series 7 owner, I've longed to have an instant-on laptop since my S7 died. Once you've enjoyed a daily computing experience of instant-on and application lauches without splash screens, sitting though a two-minute boot sequence is torture. The Psion fused the responsiveness of a PDA with the ergonomics of a laptop, which made it worth every penny of the $899 I paid for it. Hell, I'd fork over the Foleo's price, $599 for an S7 on eBay if anyone were selling. I'm just glad the Palm's releasing a more modernized rendering of the concept.