By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
I’m a little stunned here. Jeff Hawkins is a hero of mine. He designed the Palm Pilot and made the PDA a viable product category after scores of failures. Even the Treo at one point had many corporate users under its spell. And today when we were told of a new breakthrough announcement and product demo from Jeff himself to tech heavyweights Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, it just had to be good.
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff
A lot will be written about the specs and so on, so I will just cut to the chase. Here are Five reason why Jeff and Palm have really veered into outer space with the ill-fated Foleo:
1. It’s a $499 sub-notebook that runs Linux
2003 is calling on line one. It wants its hardware back Psion on line two: it wants 1996 back.
2. It’s meant to be paired with the Treo
We want to break free of pairings. We want our smartphones smarter, not some 1990s version of hot syncing. So you drag this around to give yourself a larger screen and keyboard.
3. 5 hour battery life
My tiny Sony gets nearly 8 and runs all my office apps, has integrated wireless (cellular and WIFi) and even sports a DVD burner all at about 4 lbs. True it was not $499, but my Audrey was and I can always dust it off and get to work if I have to.
4. You have to press a button to retrieve your email
Hawkins loves one button access. Why it is that most laptoip users acan simply flip open their laptops in hibernate mode and ytsrt getting email without doing a thing. Look Jeff, no hands!
5. Doesn’t Play YouTube Videos or do PowerPoints
But it’s billed as “simple and fun.†Some fun.
We Say: Wow. Palm really blew it. Even the Sony Mylo was better. Source: Palm
Yea, this Palm release took me back in time, when Win CE started coming out with larger devices. Again the excuse was screen and keyboard.
At the time I thought: This thing costs almost as a notebook and you cant have anything else but the WinCE.
So failures of the past dont apply to the present?
With notebook, umpc becoming cheaper, i’d rather have a full portable machine than a dedicated bride for my mobile device.
doomed to fail
Well said
I’m shocked as to why any decision maker on this product thought anyone would have a use for this.
I’m fairly sure that anyone that bought a Treo already has a desktop and/or laptop that they sync to.
I can see it finally starting to sell at $229.
Was this an Abilene Paradox in the making?
Palm’s mistake is coming out with this too soon. They reportedly will be coming out with a linux based operating system for smartphones by the end of the year. If they released the new OS first and got positive buzz off of it, then people would be more receptive to this product. Timing is everything.
It’s not unusual for a shift in paradigm to bring significant dissent.
When the original Palm Pilot devices were released (was it a decade or so ago?) I remember all the same arguments. What’s got me excited about Folio is that the ‘instant on’ feature is going to create a revolution in accessibility that’s long overdue. It will make the device as easy to use as pen and paper.
While Microsoft builds ever more complex, bloated operating systems, in Foleo, we have a return to the basics: functionality that supports the web’s killer application, which, in the world of business is Email, not YouTube.
Is Foleo perfect? No, not nearly. I’d love to see some Calendaring support, for example. But, it will make people sit up and take notice of what mobile computing could be, and I’m immensely thankful for that.
Regards,
Matt
P.S. The site says Foleo actually does PowerPoint. And WiFi / blueTooth support should let it pair with any available connection, whether you own a Treo or not.
Matt:
The reason folks pretty much unanimously are saying that it will fail is because the computer industry has been there, done that, and filled the landfills once already.
[...] We Say: Now, don’t get any ideas about our panning of the Foleo a few days ago having anything to do with this. However, it is notable that Jon Rubenstein, former head of Apple’s iPod division will become executive chairman of Palm’s board, as well as heading up product development. This could be the start of a much brighter future for Palm. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] Without having made a formal debut, the Foleo is receiving mixed notices from the reviewer community. ZDNet’s George Ou, thinks that, while it needs some tweaking, it poses a threat to the laptop. On the other side of that fence, Alice Hill from Real Tech News thinks it’s going to bomb, and gives five reasons why it will fail. [...]