“This is a Linux appliance with good keyboard, good display, long battery life… it’s always a focus on simplicity”
…and a serious lack of wow factor. The techno heads are going crazy calling it a ‘crippled laptop’ and worse! Its bound to be a success!
The Palm Foleo has just been announced and from what I can see, its a simplified MID with the emphasis on keyboard and screen size. An instant on basic-services laptop that partners with smartphone products.
Its got a 10″ screen (that looks like 1024×768) [update. Its 1024x600] and a full size keyboard with scroll wheel. Its got an optimized operating system based on Linux and will give you email, web browsing, photo viewing.
The concept is perfect. Its exactly what I believe is the hole in the market. A need for a large screen, a need for a keyboard and a need for an optimized operating system and an easy price. 10/10 to Palm for bringing that concept to the fore.
There are a few problems though. It relies too heavily on the smartphone. There’s doesn’t seem to be any local storage, it doesn’t support video of any sort (I’m guessing its based on a RISC processor - hence the Opera Browser and lack of video support.) and its big! Too big for a seat-back table on a flight or train. Too big to be used on the dashboard of a car. Too big for emails. There doesn’t appear to be WiFi on board either. [update: There's Wifi on board. Phew!] On top of that, its not going to win any rave reports from the hi-tech Internet community.
Update: Linux devices reports that it weighs 2.4lbs (over 1kg. Ouch thats heavy) and “has 256MB of RAM, and expandable storage via SD and CompactFlash slots. I/O includes VGA out, USB, Bluetooth, and Wifi. ” They also think it probably has a RISC processor inside.
Update: PCMagazine claims “it can deliver five full hours (even while using Wi-Fi the entire time)” Not exactly earth shattering performance from a RISC-based device that weighs over 1KG.
Its bound to be a success though! Companies can finally buy cheap mass-market Internet tablets for their lower-end traveling staff. You know, the ones that fill laptops with P2P software and viruses. The ones that lose them on the train after a night on the town after work!
As I mentioned earlier today, this is a very targeted device and it could win over a sub-set of people (not the media execs I was talking about but the lower end of the traveling employee market) and will boost help the whole Ultra Mobile computing segment by introducing the concept of Internet-on-the-go. Just like the iPhone will. And when some of the customers of these products realise they need more that just a restricted Internet experience (the RISC-based Internet experience) then they’ll probably find themselves a nice product in an x86-based Ultra Mobile device.
Based on what I’ve seen so far, the Foleo doesn’t make the grade for inclusion into the UMPCPortal database but I hope that, just like the iPhone, version 2 will come through with flying colors.
