Palm Withdraws Linux-Powered Foleo PC 165
M Saunders writes "Not long after we enjoyed playing with the device at LinuxWorld 2007, Palm has announced that it is shelving the Foleo handheld PC, before it was due to ship, so that the company can focus on a 'next-generation platform.' Palm hasn't ruled out a 'Foleo II' at some point, but for those of us looking forward to dinky Linux-powered laptops it's a bit of a disappointment. Still, with the Asus Eee PC nearby — and at a very low price point — perhaps it was a sensible move by Palm."
I'm not surprised. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200612/19/eng20
They should use USB chargers for all portable devices (assuming USB has enough juice to charge it).
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I wish the US government would follow suit. The chargers, at this point, often cost as much as buying a new phone (subsidized, of course).
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Irrelevant. The manufacturer doesn't bill depending on the customers' average wage levels. And I think the shipping cost from Vietnam to the US (in the worst case) in any quantity will be a few cents per unit. The rest is retail markup -- which is influenced by local wages and rents, but consider
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Yes, a few dollars perhaps. Look at the price of a generic transformer, same size, shipping cost, similar manufaturing cost, and the overhead (wages & rent) should be similar too. But the branded one sells for much, much more. There's no reasonable explanation except profiteering. Like many inkjet refills, for instance. Generic brand
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But the point is that if they used a standard connector, whether USB or one of the cylindrical types like many music players use, you wouldn't need to buy a new charger at all, ever.
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You can find generic crap. But if they're not constrained by patents, you can get third party compatible parts of at least as good quality.
For instance, I personally use laserjet toner "clone" cartridges, half the price of HP's, and the quality is no different, I've printed tens of thousands of pages. Inkjets are similar, read up on comp.periphs.printers for l
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Oh, to hell with those "standard" cylindrical connectors. There's nothing standard about them. Endless variations of connector size/shape, the size/shape of the pin hole in the center mean the generics almost never fit right, or you have to buy one of those multiple-bit adapters that fall apart or the bits get lost, and the
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That accounts for a few cents. No more. And in any case, if they used a standard connector, they WOULD get the economies of scale.
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My HTC produced WinMo device (T-Mob MDA Vario II, also known as the Hermes or TyTn) trickle charges off USB when plugged in. There's been a few times I've disabled it (like when I'm using it as a 3G modem plugged into may laptop which is itself running off battery) but normally when it's cradled it's charging.
I can't actually remember the last time I used the charger that came with the thing.
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Very clever approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Way, way, cheaper than taking it all the way to market.
Still, I think the recipe was almost right. I have an (unfortunately broken) Psion 7. Very handy machine in its day: instant on, reasonably fast. Light... Give it a freshen up with a faster CPU, Wifi,... and you'd have a vry useful device.
Re:Very stupid approach (Score:2)
Look like incredible fools in front of the whole frickin' world.
Show your very poor hand to everyone so there's no need to bluff anymore.
Associate your brand with outrageous failure.
My iPhone is so good all by itself that I don't even go into the next room to do an email or look up a Web page. Palm should have spent time creating the iPhone first instead of apologizing for the Treo with the Folio. I can re
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You Got Served! (Score:2)
There's lies.....
http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/install -third+party-applications-on-your-iphone-295985.ph p [lifehacker.com]
And then there's lies...
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/08/07/iphone-nes-fast-usa ble-totally-rewritten/ [tuaw.com]
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It's okay that the iPhone has some weaknesses right now. Having a fully locked-down phone for the moment means that Apple can guarantee a consistent user experience, minimize their phone crashing, and rigidly enforce a consistent s
I'm saying this as a palm user (Score:2)
They didn't need Foleo to help them do that.
Sad isn't it? (Score:2)
This is the first time in almost eight years that I haven't had a Palm. I remember the IIIxe I got when I started my first job here in Silicon Valley. It was a great tool and the free software available was really an eye-opener. What could be cooler than MAME and the whole Project Gutenberg library of eBooks to take with you while your wife is shoe shopping?
Over the years I replaced my PDA about every twenty four months and I bough
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Only problem is that it looks like PalmOS/Garnet is basically EOL. And it's also not a sure thing that Palm will be coming out with any new PDA-sized computers (like the TX) with an updated OS, but will either just keep making expensive smartphones, or weird crap like the Foleo.
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The answer.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/21/dear-palm-its-
Palm actually listened as they mentioned in their reply:
http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/08/thanks-engadget
What was the question? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big question with the Treo is whether there are enough people who need more than a PDA but less than a full laptop. Or maybe I should say, "who will buy less than a full laptop." Because there are a lot of technically clueless folks out there who'd be better off with a device that simpler than a "real" computer but does everything they need to do — most users just don't need all the functionality a PC provides. But every time somebody comes out with such a device, it fails miserably.
Why? Because such devices only cost a little less than an equivalent PC. And people would rather pay a little extra and get all that extra functionality. Even if it's functionality the won't use.
What I want to know is why Palm won't do a phone that isn't a minor variation on the Treo. There are still folks out there who don't need a QWERTY keyboard and do need a phone that will actually fit in a pants pocket. It's sad and ironic that Palm doesn't recognize this, when their foundation product was the first practical pocket computer.
Re:What was the question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm can't (or doesn't feel that it can) compete with Nokia et al in churning out low-end phones. Palm can only stay in business by making higher-end smartphones.
Their biggest problem is that their product cycle is way too long. The hardware and software revs between models seem small enough, but they're taking more than a year to push them out. That can't go on much longer.
Re:What was the question? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for their product cycle, it hardly matters how long it is when nothing really new comes at the end of it.
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http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=173 [phonescoop.com]
My ex-wife's address is....
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There are some nice Palm-based clamshells for the Asian market. Problem is, they're all tri-band, since nobody there uses the 850 band. Now, I could probably live without the 850 band, but I don't know. Anybody know a way to detect what bands a GSM cell uses in a given area?
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http://www.telusmobility.com/bc/pcs/kyocera_7135.
A friend of mine bought one, used it for a couple of years, then bought the Treo 650. The Kyocera is a little bulky, even for a Palm-based device.
Why crank out worse quicker? (Score:2)
That wouldn't be a problem at all if the products very very desireable at the start of the cycle, much less the end - Palm's problem is not one of needing more incremental Treos, but a fresh design! Which in fact was why I never bought a Treo even though I almost pulled the trigger many years running.
Forget the iPhone, they need a refresh of thinking just to keep ahead of other smartphone makers! I can't even remember when the last time was
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you're right on target with the price problem of the foleo. this comment though strikes me as a bit shortsighted. the things that even average to below average users do with their computers today is years ahead of what was being done a few years ago. 7 years ago nobody would have imagined that basic computer users
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Ever carry a desktop replacement every day? (Score:2)
Personal computing is moving away from the good old days of the 8086, and sitting at a desk to do "Lean-in" applications only. Now, in addition to the old-skool word processing, spreadsheets, heavy data lifting tasks, we're using computers at the core of our entertainment systems and for o
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The Eee is looking to be something of a train wreck in the happening. Of course, it is not released yet, so nothing is certain untill the first customers get one in their hands, but things are not looking as bright as they once were according to the rumors flying around.
Asus initially stated that a unit with 512 MB RAM and 2GB
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Now, $230 is supposed to get you 256MB / 2GB
And wasn't there supposed to be a version with a 10" screen? I've seen the prices hike up, but I haven't seen a 10" screen mentioned since the first articles came out. I was all set to buy one (hell, for the $299 [IIRC] they were quoting for it, I'd have bought two!), and I'd probably spend up to US$350 on it, but they seem to have quietly dropped that model. Another victim of the "Specifications subject to change without notice" clause, I guess.
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Only reason I can think of is I'll get jealous.... but I love my 770
Re:What was the question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of the box, yes it was. To quote the spiel:
"Foleo mobile companions work with Palm's Treo(TM) smartphones (Palm OS(R) and Windows Mobile(R) versions). However, Palm believes that most smartphones based on Windows Mobile should work with little or no modification. Smartphones based on operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple, and Symbian likely can be supported with a modest software effort."
That "little modification" and "modest software effort" would be beyond the average businessman. And, of course, their phones would have to support BlueTooth and not have BlueTooth crippled by their provider before even trying to get it to work... So in reality, we're back to a potential buyer group of Treo users, plus a handful of diehards and rich people who can afford to say "aw, shucks, doesn't work, in the basement you go".
What's flabbergasting is that it took so long before Palm killed off Fooleo. Almost all user groups predicted it would either be killed, or drag Palm down with it, and I have seen absolutely no support for Hawking's view that this was the best invention ever to come out of Palm. It was so blindingly obvious to everyone that this was a solution looking for a problem, and a bad one at that. When you can get full laptops for around $350, why would you want to spend $600 (less $100 initial mail in rebate, for those who qualified) for an ultra-slow laptop-looking device that can only do a small fraction of the things a laptop can do? And if small is your thing, the Foleo wasn't particularly small either -- bigger footprint than the new (and much cheaper) Asus models, but with a smaller screen and incredibly enough even less memory and slower CPU.
No, this was doomed from the start, and in this case, people are in their full right to tell Palm "we told you so". Because we did -- and not just a few of us either.
And, as Engadget said, "Small is sexy". Remember that, Palm. And remember how well the Palm V/Vx sold. It was small and sexy, and we luurved it! The replacements were clunkier and/or less sexy, and we didn't go for those. Simplicity and beauty in a small form factor is what you sold, and then forgot all about. The buyers didn't -- YOU did. There may still be time to do something, but the sand is running out as fast as the pennies on your budget, and you don't have much time left.
Regards,
--
*Art
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I used to think highly of Hawkins, after hearing the story about him modeling the first Palm Pilot out of a block of wood. But then he started Handspring, and came out with some of the worst PDA designs ever. And why has he never intervened in the horrible button design for the Palm m Series? (If a button is designed to turn on the PDA, you don't want it sticking out so it gets pressed in your po
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Re:What was the question? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the smartphone IS the new notebook. The notebook is the new desktop. The desktop is the new workstation. The Treo is just way behind the curve because it still doesn't have a Unix OS and Web 2.0 browser or a UI that works on a tiny screen. It was supposed to start being a real computer about 2-3 years ago.
Why buy a Core 2 Duo in a big white box when you can have it in a MacBook for $1100? Very few reasons.
Once you have an iPhone (or similar future competitor with Unix and Web 2.0 and zooming UI) you look at a PC, even a notebook, as a workstation. You use it to run Photoshop, you use it to make stuff, but you don't take it everywhere with you, you don't open it up to do email when you're on the road, you don't open it up to look up something in Google or get a map or refer to some notes. You only get the notebook out to do a real computing session, like an hour or more of real work.
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Rather than trying to shove old paradigms into new technology, in
size, weight (Score:2)
Something doesn't have to be a huge market-redefining, ipod-magnitude product to find a following. Not everything has to change the world and get 90% market saturation just to
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You are right. But it doesn't hurt to have that kind of success either.
Also seeing as how the iPhone runs OS X you could run most if not all of your mobile Linux apps on it as well. That leaves the reason to go with the Nokia being GPL/political reasons and possibly any hardware advantages the Nokia may have over
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And TeX? That's a niche within a niche! Unless you're composing scientific documents (if you're just reading them, convert them to PDF), you shouldn't bother with it. And even if you are composing such documents, you need to think about switching to a modern markup language.
I too would rather have
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And please d
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That said, I've also owned a iPAQ 6920, RIM 7100t, and RIM 7130e.
Based upon that history, I think I know a couple of things about handhelds.
I'm a consultant with no real base of operations outside of my house, so mobility is critical to my job. Little things like a phone that actually works as a phone is pretty big in my book, since people generally like to call you on yo
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At least everywhere I've worked, Palm devices are dropped in favor of Windows Mobile because the latter are apparently easier to write applications for (I've never written one so don't know), especially complicated applications with hardware hooks. Sim
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Palm is simply lagging in both hardware AND software. Where's that new OS btw?
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I wrote apps for Palm OS for a little over 3 years, and that Engadget article was right on the money. That Palm responded at all was a positive thing, but that may be the only positive thing they do about it. Their response has a hint of phoniness to it, as if they had never thought of any of the ideas listed but answered with "uh yeah, of course we're working on that". If their behavior over the last few years is any indication, they'll probably end up releasing a new device that addresses exactly none o
how about 64-bit Windows support? (Score:2)
Makes sense on a dozen levels (Score:3, Interesting)
It's sensible; they're waiting to see how hard the Eee fails in this arena before they try to launch. They'll either compete directly with the Eee and the others or they'll learn from the failures of the Eee and we'll see an even neater (can I say that, neatER?) device from Palm.
I still love my Sony Clie, and I wish Palm the best, I'd really like to see a new Palm device that had a fair chance at rekindling the good old days of the Palm Pilot.
PS. I'm not damning the Eee pre-maturely, I'd love to see it flourish as well but I'm not holding my breath. Every time Asus raises the price a hair every tech forum goon places bets on it's death. What makes me think they may be right is that these cheapskates are it's primary market. If they aren't willing to buy it at $300 or even $400, they probably never would have seriously purchased it at $260 or whatever the limbo stick was at.
Unsostainable platform (Score:2, Redundant)
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That's for sure. The Foleo's specs compare pretty well... to the two-year-old smartphone next to me.
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Not if but when? (Score:3, Informative)
Erm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I'm very much mistaken, there will never be a Foleo II. The press release is merely a cover for the fact that the product concept was DOA. Nobody was interested in the Foleo apart from a few geeks who wanted a cheap sub-notebook that ran linux. For business users there just wasn't a market for that thing and there most likely never will be.
Even die-hard Palm fans hated it, renaming it the Flopeo or Fooleo. Palm seriously screwed up with this one, but at least they had the courage to axe it before making complete fooleos of themselves
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Unless I'm very much mistaken, there will never be a Foleo II. ... Even die-hard Palm fans hated it, renaming it the Flopeo or Fooleo.
You are. There were more than a few die-hard palm fans that looked at the Foleo, and though "hey, that's worth $600." Most of those that didn't did not as much ridicule the concept (a Palm OS pseudo-Laptop!) as mock its lack of media capability.
If the Foleo could manage a plug-in USB 2.0 DVD drive, had a full PCMCIA slot, and out-of-the-box could be used to watch YouTube, it'd be on shelves right now. I'd expect the last one to be fixed, and then the Foleo launched in six months or so with the single "P
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You are. There were more than a few die-hard palm fans that looked at the Foleo, and though "hey, that's worth $600." Most of those that didn't did not as much ridicule the concept (a Palm OS pseudo-Laptop!) as mock its lack of media capability.
Well, that's certainly not true over at palminfocenter - most people there mocked the general design of something that was larger than a PDA and had less functionality (e.g. no touch screen, not as portable, lacking applications, etc, etc). A big criticism was that Palm had created the solution to a problem that didn't exist. Even those that did like the concept had to fall over backwards to justify some use for the thing.
If the Foleo could manage a plug-in USB 2.0 DVD drive, had a full PCMCIA slot, and out-of-the-box could be used to watch YouTube, it'd be on shelves right now. I'd expect the last one to be fixed, and then the Foleo launched in six months or so with the single "Palm Linux" OS.
In other words, if the Foleo was actually a sub-notebook, rather than an oversized
Axl Foleo (Score:2)
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SURPRISED? (Score:4, Funny)
When two weeks after its announcement, VIA showed a reference C7-based UMPC (reworked nano-itx rig with a screen, really)?
GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. I'd be surprised if palm managed to sell more than four of these units. Whoever made the call to do this product is a clueless idiot, and the engineers working for him are clueless idiots for not having pointed just how pathetically backward such a product would be in light of existing competition. It wouldn't have sold a decade ago. NOW?
1999 called. They want their Jornada back.
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Sweet. I've been looking to offload that piece of crap. Any chance they'd be interested in taking back a then first lady?
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too little, too late (Score:3, Interesting)
Palm decided to throw all their weight and resources behind the Treo line, and thus rendered themselves irrelevant in the PDA business, leaving a lot of users without any clear upgrade path (my T3 starts to show its age and it lacks all sorts of connectivity). Also they have slept in their laurels and have a last-century operating system that's hopelessly out of league with any other smartphone or PDA device out there. I have zero faith in them now, and while I'll be in the market for a smartphone in the next couple of years, it sure as hell will not be a Palm device; while I hope my T3 survives that long, should it fail, I'll just stop using a PDA altogether, Palm's current offerings really are *that* bad and Foleo was only an indication that they're not about to improve.
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If that's all the resources they have they are screwed. The whole point of dumping the Folio is to focus on their new OS.
The whole problem is that this company was nearly destroyed by splitting off the OS division into PalmSource. The hardware division is worthless withou
hmm, you seem hard to please. (Score:2)
Palm needs a new OS. Palm OS is looking so long in the tooth it's ridiculous.
So, what OS would you propose if it's not the one they just developed for Folio or Palm or the me too Windoze mobile?
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They withdrew it because... (Score:3, Funny)
Light at the end of the tunnel (Score:5, Interesting)
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Which makes me sad, too. The T|X is okay, but it shouldn't be the best they can do.
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As nice as the N800 is, it's is veritably useless apart from a wifi connection.
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I use a PDA too, but one with WiFi for use where WiFi is available, and BlueTooth for when it isn't (Clie UX-50). And unli
What I want from Palm (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you make that jump, something like the Folio is at least possible to think about. A big PDA for the DayRunner set that links via Bluetooth or WiFi and offers a stable platform for the road warrier who doesn't need to worry about problems with Windows and can live with a mostly browser based existence except for the vital PDA data and vertical apps kept locally.
And personally I wouldn't trade month long battery runtimes for 'multimedia clips.' A big Folio sized gadget should do it because it needs a Li-Ion battery and a daily charge anyway, but offer at least one handheld that ISN'T an iPod wannabee. These days you could sell a totally kick ass "Palm" for under a hundred dollars. There is a whole untapped market there just waiting.
How many devices do you want to drag around? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also appreciate the massive overlap -- a PDA is orders of magnitudes more useful if it can communicate with the internet (email, sync, etc) and a phone is orders of magnitude more useful if it organizes phone numbers and contact information. Bluetooth linking doesn't cut it and its not worth the
Re:How many devices do you want to drag around? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if North America had standardised on GSM, the answer would be simple: a SIM chip.
But, that's another argument for another time.
No, SIMs are not the answer (Score:2)
The closest actual example are the PC/Express Cards that the wireless vendors sell that have basically all the radio function built in. Why can't I just slap one of those (or a reduced size one) into handset/PDA hardware and go?
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They have had 6 or 7 years now and haven't made an ounce of progress with the PalmOS platform. I guess there is supposedly a native PDF viewer now which I could dredge up and set up on my Treo 650. I've never had any luck with video content, and generally find
Has to be a phone (Score:2)
In the 90's it didn't have to be a cellphone.
Now if you have an organizer, phones have just enough organizer abilities that it's hard to overcome something a user already has by nessesity (phone) to get them to buy something they are not sure if they need (more advanced organizer). So I'm afraid to sell anything broadly, a phone has to be part of the deal.
However, I agreee with this statement:
Build insanely great personal organizers.
Yes it ha
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What I'd like too see... (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Palm provides a open wireless client platform, with a simple API, the ability to run Java and/or
3. that 1 and 2 work together...
Getting web pages on a mobile device is nice, but I want to be able to not only create my own applications, but servers as well. You might be able to unlock an iPhone to work with another service, but do other services work with the iPhone?
Custom traffic maps rendered from traffic sensor data; traffic sensors which themselves could use the wireless... which then notifies you based on your current location, that if you don't leave in 10 minutes, you'll be late for an appointment.
Someone tells you about a cool new show, so you browse TV schedules, then set your DVR to record it remotely... then trickle it to your handheld in the background and watch it.
You can do a lot of that with existing web-server based tools, but sometimes a custom application that's aware of the mobile hardware could be amazingly useful, particularly if it needs to respond to 'events', not just while the page is loaded.
Nokia N800 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, I certainly hope you suffer a better fate than me and my Nokia 770. Nokia pretty much disavowed all support for my gadget as soon as the N800 was rolling off the assembly line. Not long after that, the WiFi stopped working, rendering the whole debate about whether the world is ready for an "Internet tablet" rather moot. It still makes a pretty decent eBook reader (albeit with the worst battery in history) but not much else. After this experience, it'
Bwahahahaha! (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, this might be the most embarrassing product announcement I've ever seen.
G.
My Nokia N800 replaced my Palm PDAs (Score:3, Interesting)
I have gone through quite a few Palm PDAs, including a Palm III, a Palm V, 2 Palm Vx units, a Palm m505, a Zire 22, and 4 Tungsten T|X units. I had 4 T|Xs because the screen digitizer kept failing, so Palm kept having to replace it under warranty. The glue holding the V/Vx cases kept failing, and the motherboard died on one Vx. I got tired of every single device having a different proprietary cradle and charger. I got tired of the previous generation being totally orphaned so that you could no longer find accessories or get repairs. I also got tired of buying hardcases which then disintegrated when the glue failed. Each generation had less battery lifetime, so that I started out with two weeks between charges on my Palm III and finished where I had better not forget to charge my T|X every single night. I love the operating system and user interface, but the hardware is a dismal failure.
Finally my last T|X started rebooting every time I tried to use the wi-fi. That was the last straw. I managed to get one last backup out of it.
The problem is that the Palm to-do list and calendar runs my life and rules my world. I bought an app called PocketMoney and made it a habit to immediately record groceries, gas, lunch, etc. in it, and it has literally kept me from making debit card overdrafts since 2002, when I used to make 3 or 4 a month. Washington Mutual's stock went down when I bought a Palm. I keep all my passwords in there. I write stuff down that I do only once a year and which takes 3 days to rediscover, so that when I go "how do I do..." I can look it up on my PDA. I use HanDbase to track the contents of my parts boxes, tool boxes, and book collection, and to remind me of local restaurants. I use Jpilot and I wrote my own daemon to do wi-fi hotsyncing on Linux so I can easily back it up every day with one button press. It plays a big part in keeping my daily life on track.
So I had to find a replacement. I use Linux so a WinCE/Mobile Windows unit was right out, because it's impossible to sync the data and back it up on anything but a Windows machine. I drooled over the Nokia 770 "internet tablet" for ages, but it didn't seem "programmable" or developer-friendly, and I had no idea what an "internet tablet" was supposed to do for you. Finally the Nokia 800 came out and I discovered you could run Python on it so I bought one. It turns out that you can easily write nice user interfaces with pyGTK if you take a little care to respect the limits of the CPU.
One other nice thing I discovered is that the built-in Opera browser is capable of handling my bank's website, the RoadRunner webmail page, and the Oracle Collabsuite email system at work. The Palm T|X web browser failed with all of these.
For me, my N800 is my "very tiny Linux laptop that fits in my pocket" and goes with me on my motorcycle and other places where I wouldn't carry a regular laptop.
Afraid of getting squished by Microsoft again? (Score:2)
Should I again rant about the essential badness of Windows Mobile against Palm? Seems as pointless as trying to figure out whether or not Microsoft is still losing money in that tactical niche. I was forced to switch to Windows Mobile a while ago--but it sure seems like forever.
I know what I want (Score:3, Interesting)
Software, like a gas, just expands to fill all available space anyways. Gives those programmers faster cpus and more RAM and it will still take half a second to respond to your actions and several seconds to load anything.
obviously the market disagrees with me what makes a good portable computer. I also wonder why a Palm has a massively more powerful CPU than my TI-85 but the calculator on the Palm totally sucks. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that everyone should have a solver in their pocket.
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Heavy phone, even for Treo case (Score:2)
So the phone could be right-side up, but unintentionally rotates itself upside-down, holding on for dear-life by a single button. The button came undone about 2 or 3 times within a month, dumping the phone on the floor each time. Finally, I'm out for a walk outside, and the phone must have rotated without me knowing, button comes und
Its been said already... (Score:2)
There's no sense in bringing the Foleo to market when its up to 3 times the price of Asus's EEE and less than half a machine. As much as I like the idea of computing devices on less-typical architectures like ARM, MIPS or PowerPC, I can't foot that bill in the face of superior and cheaper x86 based technology. It just doesn't make sense.
I'm sure they thought that they *really* had something before they revealed it. I'm also sure that they crapped themselves the minute the EEE and VIA's
The problem with the Foleo is its price (Score:2)
This is the Foleo's problem. It's too expensive to compete with the impending supercheap portables and it's encroaching into the price territory of more abl
Palm lost the plot years ago. (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of building on their strengths they panicked and let Microsoft move the goalposts, then went "wait a second, PalmOS isn't a multitasking laptop replacement, we gotta replace it or we're h0sed!" and ran off in every direction at once to try and replace something that didn't need replacing.
They should have continued to develop the Palm OS 4 platform and follow the Dragonball down to cheaper and cheaper hardware, ensuring a continual influx of new customers who bought a $100... $80... $50... $30... entry-level Palm instead of a $200 Pocket PC because, well, that's what the mass market can afford. They owned that market, and gave it up.
If they'd done that they wouldn't be trying to come up with a way to get people to buy into their latest high margin gimmick.
Note to Palm (Score:2)
Wanna know how to save your company? Just solve the quality problems and sell TX at $150 or less. You'll still have a ton of profit on them and these things _will_ be selling like hotcakes with proper edutisement. Including a decent pair of headphones wouldn't hurt.
Sincerely yours...
Saw it at LinuxWorld, knew it wouldn't ship... (Score:2)
Can I use this as a stand-alone PDA?
I explained that I was looking for a replacement for the NEC MobilePro, basically an instant-on portable device with a full-sized keyboard that could be used for transcription. The guy there said that he didn't know.
Of course, the reality is that the Folio was EXACTLY what I wanted. The staff just had no fucking idea what they were talking about. It was being pushed pretty much solely as a Treo accessory, which I told t
I wouldn't touch that with my barge pole.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Runs PalmOS4, can talk to printers and (some)wifi dongles. Some models have internal wifi. Battery life is huge when you're not using wireless. Takes internal rechargeable or AAs. Can recharge over USB or DC in. The only thing I wish it had was serial support but you can't have everything.
I will probably be looking at picking up an eee for different reasons, though.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the best thing Palm could do now is firing all the yes-men, and shift more of the dwindling money into market resear