Palm's Foleo $500 un-laptop (and alien ant farm)

Get in sync with Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which Palm launches the $500 "email companion". Not to mention the Zimbabwe ant farm...

Matt Hamblen reports:

Palm Inc. today announced a smart-phone companion product today called Foleo. [It] will connect via Bluetooth to a Treo device running either the Palm operating system or Windows Mobile, and it will use a large screen and full-size keyboard to help users edit e-mail and office documents.

Palm co-founder Jeff Hawkins ... called [it] the first in a "major new category" of devices that serve as companions to phones ... Foleo is built on an open Linux-based platform and will sell for $599 with an introductory rebate of $100, bringing it down to $499 ... It will stay synchronized with a smart phone throughout the day at the touch of a button. The device runs the Opera 9 Web browser and will be available sometime this summer ... turns on and off instantly and has a battery that lasts up to five hours ... will feature a 10.2-in. screen and weigh just over 2 lb. ... will also provide Wi-Fi connectivity.

Bert Latamore unpeels a banana: [That's "Guerrilla", you fool -Ed.]

I have hoped for a long time that we would see Linux-based PDAs/smart phones enter the market. I still hope for one that has the Palm application and user interfaces built in so that it will run my 30-odd third party PDA applications.
...
I think the big question with this device is will people spend that much extra for it, and will they carry it around with them, or will they connect their Bluetooth-enabled smart phone to their Bluetooth-enabled laptop to receive and manage email when they are out of the office or home? The advantage of the smart phone in handling e-mail is that you can do it anywhere, without needing a desktop or even a chair. This will require that you carry an extra device, which will probably be too big to fit in a pocket (judging from the description) and which apparently only functions as a terminal for the smart phone. Most people who need computing power away from the desk already carry a laptop, so this becomes yet another device to stuff in that computer bag.

Then we get into the question of battery drain, which is always the limiting factor in small device design. Bluetooth is low-power compared to Wi-Fi, but it does drain a smart phone's battery pretty quickly if it is on for a long time.

Harry McCracken rides the boondoggle:

I'm at the Wall Street Journal's D conference, and Palm's Jeff Hawkins--one of the few so-called visionaries in the industry who really is a visionary--is unveiling the Foleo, a new device that he's dubbing a "mobile companion." It's a sort of a subnotebook-looking gadget that he's touting as being a complement to a smartphone such as a Treo.

He's saying that he first conceived of it five years ago, when he and the other Palm founders were exiled at Handspring, but it was too early to build it--the technology didn't exist, and smartphones hasn't arrived.
...
The keyboard has an unusual approach to input that reminds me a bit of a Lenovo ThinkPad--there's a pointer nub embedded in the keyboard, a scroll wheel below the space bar, and a couple of "mouse buttons." But no touchpad.
...
Documents to Go, which, as on the Treo, lets you view and edit Microsoft Office documents--Word and Excel, and some basic PowerPoint stuff (you can't create slideshows from scratch, but can make quick edits). You can view PDFs ... it's easy to write applications for the device ... [there's] a photo viewer ... you can browse the Web over Wi-Fi or your phone connection.

It reminds Kevin C. Tofel of Windows Smart Displays:

The new Palm Foleo ... looks to be a small 10-inch laptop with keyboard, but looks are deceiving. The Foleo is actually an extension to your Palm Treo smartphone: the two devices are connected via Bluetooth to provide you all of your smartphone data on a larger screen with an attached full-sized keyboard.

Since the Foleo isn't a full or heavy OS-laden computer, it provides the advantage of "Instant On" capabilities. I see it a nice way to view and interact with your Palm data or use with your phone's connection to browse the web on a larger screen for up to five hours on a battery charge. Additionally, you can use it to browse pictures, provide presentations and more ... definitely is reminscient of the Microsoft Windows Smart Displays that might have been ahead of their time. My initial thought: very innovative and it will appeal to Palm Treo owners. Will it appeal to the UMPC market? The keyboard is there, but the computing power and the inability to run a multitude of every Windows apps leads me to a limited UMPC audience.

But Carlo Longino is underwhelmed:

Stick A Fork In Palm ... 'cause-they're-done
...
It's hard to understand the point of the Foleo, or why Hawkins and Palm think it's so wonderful. There are two ways to see it: first, as an admission that Palm won't ever be able to create a Treo that will satisfy users' needs, or an admission that they think their Treos are perfect and this is the only way they can figure out to improve on it. Neither is particularly good for the company. The Foleo's hardly compelling, when $500 fully-featured laptops are pretty common these days, while the future lies in crafting more powerful and useful smartphones, not in simply relegating them to serve as a modem for a redundant bigger device.

And Rod Edwards is aghast:

Arrghhhhhhhh. I can’t help but be curmudgeonly when this sort of craziness is what’s making the news.

Looks too big to be pocketable ... Overlaps with laptop usage scenarios ... Another layer of synchronization: Desktop syncs to smartphone. Smartphone syncs to Foleo ... Overlaps with UMPC but with 1/100th the functionality ... EXPENSIVE: $500 for an adjunct screen and keyboard for your smartphone ... Overlap with web email and document editing tools ... A nice big screen that can’t play movies.
...
There’s a vanishingly small niche of people that would find this compelling and affordable. Lame, lame, lame ... Palm to struggle, cheap acquisition bait for also-lame Motorola.

Owen Thomas adds:

Video will suck on the Foleo. Even low-quality YouTube videos will be "jerky," thanks to the Foleo's sluggish processor.

But Your humble blogwatcher is bemused:

Sounds to me like what Microsoft's Origami/UMPC should have been: light, focussed, inexpensive, instant-on.

Most criticism boils down to, "It's not a full-featured Windows laptop." Well, duh!

Let's see: Ultra-light / Inexpensive / Full-featured -- Choose any two.

In many ways, it tries to solve the same problems as the Nokia 770/N800 line -- but in a more conventional form-factor (i.e., it has a keyboard). Hopefully Palm can encourage a lively developer community at least as strong as Maemo's.

[Video of Jeff Hawkins' demo]

Buffer overflow:

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• Robert L. Mitchell: Installer crapware strikes again
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Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Microsoft innovates pre-crime D demo (and WiiWiillnotPlay)
• Microsoft "v. pleased" with brown MP3 player sales (and brown flight suit)
• Wi-Fi scare sees BBC slapped (and barcode me)
• Dell keeps its Ubuntu promise (and iMagritte)
• Nortel/BNT VoIP PR SNAFU (and RTFM on BCC)
• Older posts

And finally... Zimbabwe ant farm

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.