Comments on: Palm Says Foleo 2 Still on Track

Look, seriously. I've used palms since before it was cool to use palms--and now again that it isn't cool to use them...rrr..again. I use a Psion netBook as a laptop replacement too--it is roughly equivalent to what a 2nd gen Foleo would be like anyway. The tech economy is simply not better off with one less solid state computer shooting to be your mainstay computer(since none is currently in production). A lightweight palm laptop/solid state computer is what many of us mobile professionals really get ahead of the game with out in the field. Not a bloated expensive ruggedized Windows machine. I say it here: Hawkins was right--there is a place for a device like this. It was a DARK day the day they canceled (the smell of death it was indeed as few companies recover from that kind of move). The Foleo would have been just fine with the right software.

And none of you are better off if Palm tanks, say what you will. I mean really, what would you do with your spare time--you'd have to go back to kid's soccer games and start fights.

TI Avigo -> Palm IIIx -> TRGpro -> HE330-> TRGpro -> AlphaSmart Dana -> TRGpro -> Palm M515

-Make sure you actually ship it this time

That's all.

Yes, my mistake there was being first.

With the Eee, there are plenty of people who already have one, so there's much to read about before buying. So far, looks good.

Better than Foleo!

being an accessory to a smartphone killed the Foleo.

It needs to be an excellent standalone device first, and a mobile companion second.

Quoting Jamie Zawinski

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Poopie's corollary to JWZ's law:

Every mail device or program attempts to expand until it can read mail via IMAP and send mail via SMTP. Those devices or programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

USR Palm Pilot 1000 --> Palm Pilot Professional --> TRG SuperPilot --> Palm IIIc --> Palm V --> Palm M505 --> Palm M515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Treo 600 --> LifeDrive --> iPhone

OS X
ipod
iphone

and rejuvenated their product line.

Palm will need more than a stable, functioning POS 2...

They went to the trouble of throwing out their years of development for Fooleo-I's original OS implementation and retaining Windriver (accompanied by a big splashy PR-fluff) JUST before they threw out the Fooleo itself as well.

To NOT use Windriver would be really weird.

Or maybe the departure of the Senior VP of Engineering is now explained?

Remember - they have gone on record saying the new OS coming for the Fooleo-II is the same OS for their other devices - all now scheduled for no sooner than sometime mid-2009-ish.

No.

I was not referring to a user forum. I am referring to their actual "discover" product website. Try it.
http://event.asus.com/eeepc/microsites/en/index.htm

Like a ... a ... a ... a Zaurus!

While Palm went with Opera -- the worst goddam browser available! -- Asus went with FIREFOX.

(Memo to Palm: Even those dopes at NOKIA dumped Opera in their latest desperate version of their Anti-Internet Tablet.)

Somewhat off-topic - somewhat - but when I started up my session this morning (on a rocket PC, not PDA), among other things opening my standard Firefox to CNN (home page), Firefox slowed to a crawl.

No, Firefox froze. Solid.

Killed it off repeatedly, restarted, refreeze.

The culprit? Flash Player playing a Dell ad.

Opened up Internet Explorer and was able to read CNN, albeit somewhat slowed down.

But Firefox and that player don't mix right now at all.

And this isn't even my Ubuntu box where visiting, say, Engadget will cause the entire box to go catatonic due to the Flash stuff.

I'm about to try to visit Engadget with THIS box - I'm not hoping for the best.

The Flash Player and Firefox have serious issues - and I can't even blame antivirus software for it.

[after I visit Engadget I'll post an off-topic followup, too]

Still, I want to fondle one in the flesh before making any further assumptions. Is the build quality still as fragile as the early reports claimed?

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

Oh you must've missed my sermon a few weeks ago espousing the virtues of the Eee's innards. The Intel GMA 900 GPU and a Celeron-M or Pentium-M CPU is NOTHING to sneeze at. You could run a variety of DX7/8-era 3d games on a GMA 900, actually. I can envision many users buying an Eee just to run old games and emulators on. And compared to a Fooleo? Probably the ONLY thing the Fooleo had going for it over the Eee was styling, build quality, and screen size/resolution. That's IT! Expandability/chipset/pricing/CPU/AV capabilities/RAM/storage/core functionality, the Eee destroys the Fooleo.

Now, long-term driver support etc from Asus might be a problem but I am sure the community will be VERY good about staying on top of everything. I've almost always built PCs with Asus motherboards. They usually hit the ground running but can be bad about abandoning driver/bios support for fairly recent mobos in favor of whatever the newest/hottest chipset is. And my next Wintel laptop will likely be an Asus unless I happen to catch Dell during one of those blowout pricing events.

My main worry is that at $400, no matter how good of a value it is, just like the Fooleo, "average" users are always going to look at the $450 "real" laptops from Dell/Everex/HP/Acer etc. and figure they might as well stick with the safe, bulky, full-featured alternative.

Yes, **SOME** prices (ALL unsubsidized cellular/mobile handsets/smartphones, PDAs/PMPs, video cards, LCD projectors) need to be stepped on but I think you can safely say that notebook/laptop PCs of all flavors have certainly dropped in price a great deal over the past few years.

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

-- linkswipe from JK on the Run:
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/11/asus-eee-pcs-ar.html

I 'get' that the OS is a version of Linux and that stuff could be added and removed at user's discretion, but Asus needs to ensure the unit comes with the basic needs included and that any additional software be *really* simple to find and install via their site. And I'm not seeing that on their Eee site at present.

And yeah, the price for the specs seems awfully high - especially in regards to RAM and internal memory. While the cost of miniaturization has always been a useful excuse, for a device this 'big' (and with no HDD) running 512 RAM and a 4 GB SSD, $400 seems awfully dear. On the other hand, I guess it could be argued a user could double his 'hard drive' with the addition of a $40 4GB SD card....

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=1042

FAIL!

Next!

Here's a few pics:
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e367/twrock/ASUSEee.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e367/twrock/ASUSEee1.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e367/twrock/ASUSEee2.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e367/twrock/ASUSUMPC.jpg

(I threw that last one in there just for comparison.)

Mike, listen carefully here. The Eee is unusable by larger than Hobbit sized individuals. Ok, that's an overstatement. But seriously, do you see my hand in those pics! I can not even get my finger tips onto the home row keys, even while I have them crammed together as tight as possible. Compared to my Dell 700m which has "slightly" undersized keys, the Eee's keyboard is more than a whole key narrower from the A to the quote key and are even more undersized top to bottom (the keys are not square). There is no way I could enter text on this machine. ASUS obviously made for children (all the advertising had kids plastered all over it), but I can imagine some adults buying this as well just because it's way cheap and way light and way convenient. But Mike, do not buy one without first attempting to use one. You have been warned, and if you go ahead and get one and then come back here in a few weeks pissing and moaning about what a piece of crap it is, I for one will mock you without mercy. Just be really sure you are going to be able to use it before you put down your cash.

A couple of other notes. If somehow they put a real keyboard in this thing (I don't see how given the size constraints of the whole machine), at 7 inches the screen really does look too small. Of course it's "big enough", but I'd really like to be looking at a 10 inch screen in an ultra-portable unit. I know there were rumors that ASUS was going to do this eventually, so maybe that would be solved. But that leaves me once again feeling like the Foleo really was hitting the sweet spot with regard to its form factor. Hawkins was right; if you start out with a full-sized keyboard in a standard layout, the 10 inch screen is what follows. And as I've mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the trackpoint as well.

So my curiosity about the Eee has been answered, and I am not at all interested.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

>>>(And if Palm -- OK, *Hawkins* -- hadn't underspecced the hell out of the Foleo, there would have been room for both -- and I would've actually given the edge to the Foleo since Palm had done what even NOKIA hadn't been able to do with its Anti-Net Tabs: lasso *developers* for it. That, and its ISO-sized keyboard. And, yes, as you mentioned, its better screen too.)

Ah, that screen and keyboard... hmmm, can Palm sell Foleos without the guts in such a way that their could be a gut transplant from the Eee?

OK, now I've gone mad.

Krakow: Budget, ultralight laptop is a winner

http://krakow.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/02/444881.aspx

Here let me help you out a little more. On my standard desktop keyboard, the distance from the left side of the A key to the right side of the quotes key is approximately 20.8 cm (8.2 inches). On my undersized Dell 700m, it is 19.2 cm. On the Eee, it is 17 cm. No, I do not have small hands, but neither do I have huge hands, and I am a fairly typical six foot tall ""European male. I compared the width of my fingers to another "European" male just this morning who is four inches shorter than me and the width difference was negligible.

In the end, the issue will be whether or not your fingers fit or not, or whether or not your typing style makes it possible to use such an undersized keyboard. For me that simply isn't possible.

And no, Mike, I do not really want one. If you gave me one, I would simply pass it on to my daughter or wife because attempting to use that small of a keyboard and screen would be frustrating beyond acceptable. Maybe they would find it usable, but I can't even sure about that.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

I created my own idiosyncratic style when I taught myself to type on a (cover your eyes, kidz!) PORTABLE MANUAL TYPEWRITER ages ago. (Which also accounts for why I tend to bash keys harder than they need to be -- man, did that keyboard need downward pressure!!)

My post wasn't intended to imply that you weren't noticing the size of keyboard and screen, just that when you finally get one of these into your hands, you might find, as I did, that it is even smaller than you were imagining. If small is the goal, this thing is an absolute winner (particularly at that price with those features). But for me, the whole thing seemed ridiculously small, unusably small. There simply isn't any reason for me to spend money on such a device (no matter how cheap) if I won't be able to use it productively. Of course YMMV.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

They did seem kinda large, didn't they? (that was the first thing that popped into my head on looking at the pictures - and I'm about 6'2" and have been called "football (not soccer) player"-like in appearance - and those fingers were large compared to mine!)

Actually, I didn't look at the background at all, not having a clue what a finger looks like against a keyboard of any size.

I was strictly looking at the shape of the fingers themselves, in particular (on second look since the initial impression was garnered by glance, not stare) the shape of the index finger and its first joint (closest to palm).

price/features/form factor looks good, but i would only buy a Windows laptop.

http://members.forbes.com/global/2007/1112/024a_print.html

Asus is kicking ass. I really really hope they follow up with PDAs!

Lesson for Palm:

>>>The company first said the computer would be on shelves by August, then September, before it finally arrived Oct. 17. The holdup, says Shen, was making sure the interface worked well. To test it, Asustek took 1,000 prototypes and distributed them to employees and vendors, with strict orders to share them with family members of all ages. Bloggers on Eee PC Web sites that sprung up after the Computex show groaned that the product was taking too long to come out, but that didn't bother Shen. "The user experience must be very high," he says. "So we delayed, because with all the momentum built up around this product, I want to make sure it's exactly right."

Hey, Hawkins & Colligan, thanks for saying the Foleo would come out END OF SUMMER, you eejits.

How many times must I repeat myself?
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/02/10/hey-nokia-this-is-how-quality-works/
(Given what I've read about Leopard, Apple should have STFU too about an October release!)

In 18 months, the world could end. For us all. Or at the very least, for Palm!

I still don't understand this griping about the Eee's "price increase." So it's $400, not $200. Big deal! It's the first truly affordable subnotebook!

And Asus is a smart company. You think it will always have a wee keyboard? Watch them get the Foleo keyboard religion mighty fast! No moss is going to grow on that company.

Back OT:

I'll personally be keeping a close watch on the Sunday retail circulars. The FIRST time BB puts the Eee PC in its weekly circular, the "average joe" interest level is certain to be piqued. It'll be interesting, if the Eee is a (relatively) big success for BB, if Asus will use that as leverage to start getting their PCs/monitors/video cards etc. on BB shelves.

Y'know what I'd love to see? A "build yer own" Eee online store site down the road! Some people like Ron and me want a bigger screen but don't care much about the onboard storage (since SDHC is so cheap). Some people like want, say, a Pentium-M instead of a Celeron-M and gobs of SSD/RAM but are fine with the smaller LCD. Assuming M$ comes out with a "lite" version of Vista as planned ad/or keeps offering XP to manufacturers past '08, it'd be a good way for n00bs to get a Eee pre-loaded with XP.

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

if so, to what laptop PIM app?

if it doesn't have windows, i don't think i want it.

WHO would ever have imagined a PIC thread THIS bizarre without the involvement of TVoRE-Tellurian, Ska, Dr.O, Lefty, Jeff Kirvin et al??

http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/EeePC/EeePC4G(701)/e3509_EeePC701_web.zip

-- you might have copy&paste that. It's squirrelly even then. Keep trying.

Tim, if you refuse to believe the iPhone is a piece of technological innovation, then you're even MORE of a fool than I initially imagined. If you buy anything from Palm today, it will be outdated in 12 months in the form that its Operating System won't even be supported anymore.

Know who else owns an iPhone besides me? I'll give you three guesses. (Hint: Next time you get to use an iPhone, go to the PIC homepage. You'll figure it out quickly.)

So go ahead and puke everywhere. Meanwhile, I'll continue to enjoy my phone.

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + S710a

Freak, why did you puke? If you truly believe Palm to offer a superior experience, why puke?

Is it finally dawning on you how serious a competitor Apple will prove to be for Palm?

Competition is good - the only way this is bad for Palm is if they don't raise their game.

"Invention of the Year" doesn't have to be something that saves millions of lives. Wait until you get to play with an iPhone for yourself and begin to realize how well the OS cooperates with you instead of fighting you.

Or you can keep playing with Palm OS. How is Blazer working on your Treo? Good to know that you're getting poorly-displayed pages faster than I am. Uh oh, I'm on a college campus with free Wifi across town. Scratch the speed thing. At least you can still install Palm OS applications, right? Good to know you have great applications such as "Pocket Mirror" which turns your screen black to function as a mirror, or alternatively turns it white to function as a flashlight in the dark.

Damn. How am I getting along without that antiquated OS?

-Bosco
NX80v + Wifi + BT + S710a

The people at Time would disagree with you.

>The point is that it's not "Invention of the Year". That title should go to something truly deserving of the title.
>How 'bout any one of the life-saving drugs or medical equipment released this year? Or maybe the OLPC XO
>laptop? There's plenty of far more worthy contenders for "Invention of the Year" than a freakin' 2.5G mobile
>phone with a web browser. (That can't even do MMS.)

Freak, why even bitch about MMS - did you even read the article?

Trust me, if we lived in some warped alternate reality where Time stated the Centro or the Foleo were products of the year, you'd crap in your pants with joy.

We all know you blindly love all things Palm - to the exclusion of better/more advanced/more stable products.

Too bad you're unable to admit your bias!

Puhleeze.

Yo, Palm, notice *PDA* never became Man of the Year?

Resign, Colligan!

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Time.MOTY.1982.html

Or just have your damn text-to-speech software read it to you!

Kids these days...!

Thank you, Mike. That's very nice of you. :D

Though now I do wonder how many people online assume that that's not my real name.

twrock wrote:
"At $300, the 110's hardware isn't significantly different/better than the TX (well, maybe build quality, but that will take some time to see)."

To be specific, 2x the processor speed and memory (both RAM and flash), half the screen resolution, removable battery, SDHC support. 3.5" screen versus 3.8".

"The 210 is the unit to really look at, but at $450, the 210 is seriously pricey."

It's not entirely clear whether it's going to be $450 or $400. Both prices were listed on the HP site.

Show me a 4" version of the Eee PC with twist-and-flip convertible design and touchscreen, and I'll concur that the iPaq (or TX, or insert target here) is circling the drain. But there's a big value in pocketability. If I can't carry something in my pocket, I might as well be carrying my full size laptop.

Well, duhhhhh, there was that clamshell Zaurus, which also had a HD. Don't blame me for Sharp lacking the testosterone to make it succeed.

Eh, the new classic iPaq that's out might have half the rez of a TX, but its screen sure kicked the hell out of the screen of my LifeDrive in brightness. See pic here:

http://mikecane.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/dl2007064.jpg

-- yes, my LD was on *full* brightness. And no, the worn WriteRight wouldn't have accounted for it being *that* dim. (And yes, both are displaying full-year Calendar.)

Also, it felt like it was made of air. Probably the lightest PDA I've ever handled.

But I poo-poo in the general direction of the iPaqs. Overpriced and now even more niche products than they had been. (The most niche award goes to the ONE-GRAND HTC Advantage. Now there's something that had it been $400 would have been tempting...)

But they are!

But so are *all* PDAs now.

Thanks a lot for that, Palm!

BTW: Colligan, RESIGN ALREADY!!

Next!

Laugh of the day!!

Thanks!!

I wish he'd make it clear one way or the other, dammit!

And as someone who busted his ass on the Foleo, how many times did his jaw bounce off the floor when he finally started using the Eee and saw the huge difference in functionality (and LOWER price too!)?

http://tinyurl.com/5pjoyk

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9