The new Foleo laptop from Palm is a letdown from an e-book perspective even though it can view PDF files. A tablet would have been a much nicer form factor. Or how about an OLPC-style convertible? The new Linux-based laptop has Bluetooth capability and is designed to be used with a Treo phone. Battery life is five hours. The 1024×600 color display is ten inches, which means that some people may want to show two pages at once. Price is $500, not that different from far more powerful laptops. Bummer.
What is nice for e-bookers: The instant on and off, along with the use of Flash memory rather than a hard drive. Weight is two-and-a-half pounds.
Acknowledgment: Yes, I know: Palm is supposed to serve the mobile community as a whole, not just e-bookers. So be it. May the e-book industry do well enough for vendors to give it more respect in the future!
I think it’s kind of a nice set of features for the price… Should be easy to extend and modify.
I agree with Bill — its like an updated color version of the Alphasmart keyboard that used Palm software.
Not sure about e-book reading, but for those of us who primarily use our laptops for writing, this would be very nice.
Bill and Brian…
Let me know what extensions and modifications you’d make. I still wonder about the difference between this and existing laptops—other than the linux and absence of a hard drive and the Treo angle. The instant on is nice. But I still wonder about the value offered. See CNET.
As for writing, at least for now it’s a different app from immersive reading. The glory of the OLPC machine is that it’s good for both.
Great to have different perspectives. Looking forward to your plans—real or theoretical—for the Foleo, Bill. Same for anyone else!
Thanks,
David
I think, more and more, that a linux-based non-hard drive mini-laptop under $500 is an inevitability. It’ll come from OLPC or it’ll come from someone else, but we’ll get it. And I can’t wait! My palm device is all messed up and pretty much only useful for reading ebooks now. I like it, but the screen can be so small-feeling sometimes, and I worry about my eyes with al the screen refreshes. A bigger screen would mean I wouldn’t have to refresh the screen as often. And if I could have a reasonable battery life and be able to type on the go, so much the better. Alphasmart makes some good products, but their prices are way too high for what you get. I think there is still a niche for a mini-laptop minus the hard drive, cd drive and other battery-sucking, weight-adding, price-inflating frills.
“Alphasmart makes some good products, but their prices are way too high for what you get. I think there is still a niche for a mini-laptop minus the hard drive, cd drive and other battery-sucking, weight-adding, price-inflating frills”
The problem for Palm is you can buy a Windows laptop that blows away all of the specs on the Foleo (other than battery life) for about $400 (throw Linux on there and the Windows laptop will actually be useful).
I would love to have a Foleo, but there is at best a tiny niche market for such a device and its very perplexing to see Palm gamble on this. I predict by Christmas these will be going on ebay for $200 (yay for me, but short that Palm stock).
As a Treo user, I can’t believe they apparently poured so much R&D into this while they have gotten so far behind the technology curve with the Treo itself. The best thing I can say about my Treo after a year and a half of use is that I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for it out of my own pocket.
Why does solid state storage equate instant-on?
But not an ultra-mobile one. Windows laptops for actual mobile use tend to be far more expensive.
If anything I find the 5 hrs battery time the most disappointing, viewed from the perspective of actually using the Foleo for which it is intended. Also, a device this small and not using a hard disk should weigh less than 2lbs.
Do people compile their own laptops the way they do desktop PCs and media players? If so it would be interesting to watch that scene for ultra-mobile, low-spec devices.
It’s that darn big bright color LCD screen that eats battery and weight. But it’s a practical requirement for the kinds of people Treo phones are aimed at.
Why they love the keyboard that much.
Just design the machine with a plug and bluetooth is enough.
People can plug in the keyborad or carry a portable keyboard if they love it.
A virtual keyboard is not that difficult to write even with scim I suppose.
And the ability to read under the sun is very important also.
However, I think the instant on and open system will be very please. Especially thinking that Djvu, annotation, text-to-speech and dictionary will be possible.
Moreover, I hope they include advance font tech which usually not available in Linux due to patent.