The Foleo, Palm’s awesomely useless laptop designed to work with the Treo smartphones, is dead—at least in its current configuration. Palm killed the machine even before its official release.
So Palm, when will you give us a truly e-book friendly tablet?
More details via Google News, Techmeme, TechDirt and MobileRead.
Also hardware related: A pessimistic Silicon Valley Insider piece on the Amazon Kindle, following up on an N.Y. Times article that Robert Nagle discussed earlier today.
See other Techmeme and Google News links, too.
Hey David,
Have you seen/tried an HTC X7501 Advantage? I personally think it is the best all around device available today.
It has 5″ VGA lcd display. Not the really long battery life of e-ink, but then how often do you really use a device for more than 3 hours without access to an electrical outlet? And with a five inch display it is just borderline pocketable while the Sony reader at 6″ is not.
Plus having lcd means good contrast ratio, backlight (I use it more indoors than I will ever use one outside), and video (It is great for watching movies at the gym while I am cranking out my time on the stair machine).
I tried the whole DRM ebooks several generations ago, but the annoyance factor was too high so I mostly stick to non-DRM reading material like Baen. But since this device is windows PocketPC version 6, it should handle all the standard DRM formats.
The other great thing is that this is truly an all-in-one device. It is a phone. It has high speed internet which really works. It has GPS and a 3 megapixel camera.
For all the things it does well, beyond what a Sony Reader or the Kindle sound like they will do, I think this one is worth its price ($850 on Amazon.)
Duane
Duane re HTC – Advantage X7501: Big thanks for bringing the Advantage to our attention. I love it when people discover new hardware for us. This gizmo one is pricey but, yes, delivers a lot of value. For our other readers, here’s the Amazon writeup. Specs below. I’d like to know more, such as the OS system in this case. Apparently a variant of Windows? David
Product Features
* Laptop-style cellular phone with powerful Windows Mobile 6 professional operating system
* Connect anywhere with 3G/HSDPA and Wi-Fi, Built-In GPS and stereo Bluetooth 2.0
* 5-inch VGA LCD touchscreen display and detachable QWERTY keyboard
* Provides familiar Microsoft tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook
* Internal 8GB hard drive, expands via miniSD cards; 3-megapixel camera for stills and video
Technical Details
* Band / Mode: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
* Cellular Technology: GSM
* Cellular Technology: GPRS
* Cellular Technology: EDGE
* Internet Browser: Yes
* Bluetooth Enabled: Yes
* Total Memory: 8 GB
* Expansion Type: Mini SD