Palm Foleo Hands On Gallery

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

So I will have to wait until I get my hands on a Foleo to know, but it does appear to have good potential for a high-volume device.

P.S.

Why is is that a lowly 126mhz Tungsten E can play video quite decently but a mighty $600 Foleo with a thoroughly modern OS cannot play even windowed video 4+ years later? Hawkins really shot himself in the foot with that CPU/video comment.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

I'm a proud owner of a Palm TX and Think outside keyboard and a Macbook

The Foleo sounds promising for cost, weight, and open platform

It has a terminal and doesn't run Windows. What more can you want? :-)
Oh wait it doesn't do mp3s, WMA, MOV? --> don't buy it.
It runs Opera vs Blazer.
It doesn't weigh 6 pounds of $599 bottom feeder laptops --> I know people enjoy lugging around their Costco bricks to show how cool being thrifty is.
It doesn't cost a grand like most UMPCs. --> Ah the joys of throwing away $1-2G on something that will be obsolete in 18 months.

It has common connectivity and expansion options: SD, CF, USB i/o, WiFi
It is not a two-fer and it doesn't need a carrier like my TX or N800.

In a true sense, the Foleo is an open book ready to be written.

Geez, I can't believe the "supportive" comments here are PalmInfoCenter.
I guess it is easier to put something down than see the potential this new category can become.
Palm doesn't owe users anything.
Sure a lot of the naysayers wished Garnet a quick death and Palm taken over so we can all feed on WinMob bloat and all that MS dreck, but I for one, am glad to see this new product offering.

Go Palm Go!

Oh, foolish mortal. Think Opera is that stable and reliable, do you? What a shock you have coming, baby!

Granted, Palm did a poor job explaining the "extendibility" of the new platform, but once you get past the fact that this is NOT suppose to be a revision of the LifeDrive or TX, you can start expanding your mind into what it's actually designed to do.

Even though it's not a laptop replacement, I think Hawkin's in banking on the fact that over time, caring around a complicated and expensive device like a laptop may become less and less of a necessity for many business users. As business applications are now presented in web form, or through framework-based application models like Java and .NET, the need for big, bad-ass, laptops will start to decrease.

To really understand Hawkin's vision, don't think of this device as a replacement for your old device, but more the stepping stone into a new paradigm or mobile computing. You'll always have your smartphone with you containing the bulk of your mission-critical PIM content which Palm will remain to innovate on, and expand. But now they have a platform to extend the feature set into multimedia boosts like a fully-featured music player or DVD-like video. If you believe that this device will not be able to play mp3's or decent quality video, you're being unrealistic. There has been very little said about these capabilities thus far, and people are taking the small amount of given information and rendering it into half-truths.

In a nutshell, Hawkin's is attempting to do what he does best... Predict the future of mobile computing, and for the time being I'm going to at least extend the courtesy of being patient and seeing what's to come in the near future.

Remember that Palm is still innovating on their existing lines, and I'm sure we'll see some interesting changes in those areas as well. I think people will be pleasently surprised if they are patient enough to see this product to it's maturity.

Tungsten T --> Palm TX --> Foleo-mini??(like and LD-II??)

Dude.. they're a company that is supposedly trying to make money. And they need to sell stuff to do this. "Don't owe users anything"? I guess not, if they don't mind loosing those users.

"Screw the customer! Screw the consumer! Lets show them how free we are from their wants. We'll make whatever the hell we want and if they don't like it.... oh... then we go under..."

From Ben Combee:

Well, I can't promise anything, but we're certainly going to try to get something working soon after release. I think the real obstacle is finding versions of the Flash video codecs that are optimized for our CPU.

Brian

I believe you meant to type "Flopeo III"...

Where's the Axim, these days?

It's all about phones now. The Tungsten TX, Lifedrive, et. al. was targeted at the sorts of regular posters here in the PIC. Not at ordinary users, they were devices that were built to make you guys happy. And that's why they didn't sell worth a crap, because there just aren't as many of you guys as there are regular folks.

There are a LOT of people out there that don't own laptops. Surprised? Then this whole product line isn't targeted at you. Sorry. You can stick by your TX and use it until the screen wears out. There will probably be a Treo out by then that will live up to your expectations.

Palm III->Palm Vx->Palm m505->Palm m515->Tungsten T->Tapwave Zodiac II->Treo 700p

I think that is one of the primary reasons you seeing so many long faces amongst the PIC faithful. The 700p ROM update is still vapor, the 755p is available only on Sprint and is a pitiful sideways upgrade in nearly every way, the Foleo is most certainly NOT a Treo, Palm has ZERO plans for any future PDAs, and Garnet-based devices seem to have reached the end of the line.

So now everyone who is a Palm OS fan is basically left to either stock up on old TXs while they are still available, use whatever device they current have, suck it up and go to Sprint for a 755p or abandon ship for M$/RIM's greener pastures (and spend $ & time transitioning to another platform).

It's just NOT a good time to be a Palm OS fan. Hawkins and co. should be flogged for not taking a few minutes to address everyone they alienated during the Foleo presentation the other day--namely, PDA users, Palm OS Treo users, Vista users, and 700p users.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Please, for your own health and sanity, go out and buy an extra TX. Or buy a gently used T5 from E-Bay. Stick it away for the inevitable time when your current TX finally wears out. I fear we won't even be able to buy a new Palm OS-based PDA after the end of 2007.

Ryan posed a direct question to Hawkins and he called the PDA a "mature" product that did not warrant further investment or R&D.

Let me post an excerpt from TreoCentral's Dieter Bohn's latest piece:

The subject turned to whether or not the standalone PDA was well and truly dead. PalmInfocenter's Ryan Kairer asked if the Foleo was the final nail in the coffin. Hawkins shrugged. He admitted that the PDA business was declining, it was mature. He said it was no secret that Palm isn't devoting a lot of resources to that business, but that they're still relatively happy with it, they don't really feel any need to kill it.

Interestingly, though, Hawkins returned to the theme of how the Foleo's development mirrored that of the Pilot. More specifically, Hawkins talked about how refreshing it is for Palm to have total control of a product end-to-end. With the Foleo, there are no carrier restraints, no carrier approvals, demands, delays, etc. That's what allowed Palm to announce when they felt like it, to set the price point wherever they wanted, to market however they liked, etc. With the Foleo, "Nobody tells us what to do."

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Every time you get a prediction wrong, you whine that this is "the end of the line for Palm". You do it ALL THE TIME. About everything that happens.

New software comes out: "end of the line for Palm".
New hardware comes out: "end of the line for Palm".
Treo is bestselling smartphone: "end of the line for Palm".

If I pick any random three posts of yours over the last four years, two of them will be predicting the "end of the line for Palm".

Palm is still here, my friend. :)

------
"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."

I have a Palm T5, with external keyboard and a MacBook 13", private, plus a regular Dell laptop at office.

There are cases in which the laptopos are heavy and sturdy and I don't need all the functionalities.

There are many cases, meetings, business travels, in which what I really need is internet access, web and e-mail, and some basic office functionalities. And such a device may actually fit that niche properly.

Talking corporate, most applications I use in the office are web based, so that wouldn't be an issue (if, and I may have some doubt about it), the device has the horsepower to run some java intensive application.

Sometimes I'm using the combination T5 + keyboard in the same way, but you have to set it up, not a big deal, but still takes up time, and the screen size is still limited.

I think that there professionals that may really benefit from this device, like journalists on the go.

It's promising, I'll give a try in the next future. Now, if it could work with the iPhone ...

I would definitely be interested in it for bringing to meetings to type notes, short business trips, etc.

Mike

I feel your pain guys. I liked my "leaked version" a lot better. :-o I felt the same sick way after the G-mail RSS. (Somebody is now unemployed at Palm BTW) I too was hoping for the iPod killer etc etc.

But, the more I think about this, the more I am seeing the idea. Foleo is a beginning, not an end. A killer smartfone would just be "polishing the brass on Palm's sinking ship". Little Palm cannot do feature battles in the increasingly commoditized smartfone world. If they tried, they would just be committing slow suicide, corporate takeover style.

Foleo is rolling the dice. It truly IS like nothing else. C'mon, how many geeks like us had the slightest clue. Some said UMPC, but that's not even what this is. Nobody else is doing this concept.

Sure it's lightweight on features compared to lugtops, but just watch the demo again and ask yourself "do that act like a laptop"? Notta chance.

Palm is attempting to take the best of what their advantages ("zen") and spin it into the next step of computing. Mobility! Seriously, it's a beginning, not an end. The groundwork is being laid for much more in the future. Foleo represents a few popular and important technologies working (crosses fingers!) with absolute Palm "zen". Soooo much more can come later. And quickly with Linux under the hood.

The more time I give this, the more the whole concept is growing on me. In fact, in myt new biz venture with a lotta travel I am thinking of being an owner. I leave the lugtop behind 1/2 the time b/c of the hassles, and just take the Treo.

I aint saying this things gonna work. But, we've been moaning for innovation forever. Now that we get "new category" innovation, it chokes us. (Of course 3 years of glacial innovation and freakish product support can cause a doubt or 2) At least Palm is rolling the dice here and not just positioning for a buyer. This will either launch them into the future powerfully or put the swift smackdown on them. It also explains a lot about the past 3 years products.

I'm just saying, "give it a while to sink in". Hawkins in his short lifetime has not 1, but 2 of the top 50 tech product innovations of all time! Surely that's good enough to hold off full fire and brimstone until at least release/review day. Huh?!?

Pat Horne

My PDAs: Visor --> Visor Neo (blue) --> Zire 71 --> Tungsten T3 (with 4 _GOLDEN_ screws) + zodiac 2 + Tungsten X

If developers jump on board, we may see:

* A good light-weight fully functional email client.
* A good media/music player.
* A good IM client.

We already have Opera for browsing.

The biggest problem is going to be the lack of an office framework, especially for word processing and spreadsheet manipulation, however I'll be curious to see how Docs 2 Go runs - maybe that's all we need?

As they say, time will tell.