My “Foleo”
Palm, oh Palm. You had me at Foleo. I loved the concept.
A companion for your smartphone is a great idea but too much emphasis on “syncing email” is perhaps a little misplaced. The whole idea is overall connectivity using a device which is lighter and more portable than your average notebook. Wifi, a bigger screen and better browser experience are the main things we need. Where there is no wifi, the smartphone will serve as a conduit to the internet. I finally managed to tether my Asus eeePC to the Treo 680 using bluetooth instead of cable to access the internet via GPRS/Edge. It took me a better part of yesterday afternoon and it’s not easy in Linux but the eeeuser community is great and there are lots of tips in the forum and in the wiki.
Reading PDFs is a must for me especially as there are lots of reading – medical references and journal articles in PDF format – to do, which isn’t that pleasant an experience on the Treo’s tiny 320×320 screen. Even though Docs2Go does a fine job, it’s the size of the screen that matters and the eeePC will be far superior in this respect.
I won’t miss syncing email simply because nowadays I use webmail. This complements the Treo which is primarily used to fetch email via “push” email using Chattermail + Gmail IMAP.
While the Asus eeePC is not “instant on” it boots up very quick. From hibernation mode it takes like 10s. From a reboot it is also much faster than your average notebook or desktop – about 25s. Hey come to think about it, that’s faster than my Treo 680′s reboot time! So Jeff Hawkins, while it would be cool to have “instant on” it’s not a big deal.
Pricing would be important too. At the moment the 4G Asus eeePC is US$299 which is considerably cheaper than the price of the Foleo when it was announced ($500 after rebate IIANM).
Palm, I still have hopes for your Foleo II. I do believe there is a huge pent up market for this sort of device. It’s not just a smartphone companion here, it’s the notebook replacement concept we are talking about. A device which is smaller and lighter than your average notebook, yet does most of the things we do (Internet connectivity, Office productivity, VOIP, PDF reading).
The Asus eeePC it is for me at the moment. But Palm, you could still have me at Foleo II.
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About the author, Alan: Alan Teh is a Malaysian Physician who specialises in Hematology-Oncology & Stem cell Transplantation. He has been using Palm PDAs since 1997 and is absolutely reliant on them. His current PDA is a Palm Pre and is a strong advocate of the webOS platform, Palm's latest operating system. Caught the blogging bug in 2004 and has been addicted ever since… |
