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The PDA Guerilla: The Palm Foleo, Part 2
11 comments- IT TOPICS:Emerging Technology, Linux, Mobile & Wireless, Personal Technology
Now that the Palm Foleo has been announced and we have seen it, I like what I am seeing. Whether Palm will market it correctly and whether it can win a market in competition with the big boys of the laptop industry -- Dell, Hewlett-Packard, etc. -- is another question.
Unfortunately, Palm has not released a spec sheet on the device, so I have to base my analysis in part on reading between the lines, and I think that in marketing it as a smart phone add-on, Palm is selling the device short. Rather than a dumb terminal for smart phones, this is really a low-end laptop that costs $500, runs Linux, and is designed to integrate seamlessly and wirelessly with your smart phone (or potentially any phone with inbuilt Bluetooth) for connectivity anywhere you can get a cell signal. For people who do a large percentage of their work or play on the Web and are often away from home or office, the Foleo may be an ideal tool.
Internally, it operates like a PDA with a 10" screen than a laptop. With no hard drive, it stores everything in solid state memory. Palm has not yet revealed how much memory it has, but it does have slots for both CF and SD cards, if you need more memory. You can buy an 8 GB CF for $100 online, so this feature becomes a relatively inexpensive way of increasing the device's internal memory. If you do need a lot of storage -- for instance, if you need to manage large numbers of photographs or videos -- you can organize them on CF or SD cards and insert the cards with the files you need at the moment. It also becomes an easy way to transfer files from your desktop computer, your PDA, or your digital camera, directly to the Foleo and from there, email them or post them to a Web site, wherever you happen to be. As a former daily newspaper journalist and photojournalist, I can easily see applications for that: I could file photos and articles directly from events and have them on my editor's desk in minutes.
Another way in which the Foleo's internal operation is more like a PDA than a laptop is that its processor never shuts off. The power button turns the display on and off, but because the internals are constantly powered on, you have no boot time when you press the power button. This can be very useful -- for instance, in airports. It often isn't worth getting your laptop out while waiting for your flight; by the time you have it booted, you get only 10 minutes to do anything before you are shutting down. In contrast, the Foleo turns on and off at the touch of a button.
Yet another exciting aspect of the Foleo is that it is running what are essentially Palm applications, including Documents-to-Go, which handles Microsoft Office files, over Linux. Readers know that I have been hoping for a next-generation Palm OS built on Linux but able to run Palm applications, and this may be it. Palm says that it is easy to convert applications, and I hope that this applies to the huge library of third-party applications for the Palm OS PDAs. If so this can become a very useful device very quickly.
So will this meet your needs? That depends on what those needs are. But Linux is becoming commonplace on corporate servers, which means that many organizations have staff who know how to work with it and, to an extent, program for it. So this is not a new OS being introduced into the corporate environment. And since this laptop is designed to tap existing cell phone networks for its primary Web access, giving it access anywhere you can get a cell signal, it grants field personel access to enterprise systems over the Internet using Web portals without requiring any software beyond the Foleo's browser.
Why should corporations look at this alternative, when they already have stocks of Windows laptops? First, Foleos cost less -- $500 versus $1,000-$1,500 for a laptop is big difference when buying laptops in truckloads. Second, because this is a Linux device, security is much easier. No one is sending out malware for Linux, so your users are not going to come back from a trip with infected laptops that require attention from support personnel. Also, the lack of a hard drive makes it easier to control what goes on these machines and eliminates a point of mechanical failure, making them more rugged. And the inbuilt integration with employee smart phones becomes a huge advantage over laptops, which usually need a Wi-Fi or hard-wired connection to the Internet, which can be hard to find when you are away from your home or office.
In the home market, the Foleo basically becomes a $500 computer. With the right applications, this can tap a market of people who just are not going to spend $1,000 for a laptop but who can see the advantage of having a computer that they can pack up and get out of the way when they want and carry wherever they want. It also is going to be lighter than most, if not all, laptops -- another advantage of not having a hard drive. And home users can rent their software and access it over the Internet through Web portals without installing and maintaining it on their mobile devices. This can be cheaper and easier, and it eliminates the problems of upgrades and of moving everything to a replacement computer when the old device finally dies.
So yes, I do see a market for this device. The question is whether Palm can market it successfully to those potential users. Palm undoubtedly is going to depend on the cellular service providers to do most of its marketing, but the issue there will be whether those vendors and their store personnel, who are focused on selling services rather than hardware, will understand what the Foleo really is and put any real marketing behind it. For that, we will have to wait and see.
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