Comments on: Palm Foleo Details Leaked?

Uh, no. And, uh, no.

Unless it's disinformation from Palm itself. OTHO, why disseminate it only hours before the real deal...

We'll have to wait and see.

- Tere

After so much hype, for this to be the crowning device of the touted new product category would be a disappointment, to say the least.

The whole 'smartphone companion' concept seems troublesome - I read it, and I get this immediate sense of 'too many steps'; another device, another link, another thing to carry, another tool to interface, etc. It seems a ponderous concept, against the whole palm ethos of simplicity and efficency and minimization of steps which was what made its original devices so popular - a nexus of ideas that (?I think?) Hawkins embraces ... purportedly

If this is the device to be announced, it also adds another nail to the coffin of the sans smartphone camp. Preaching to the choir, I know, but the days of Palm (software/hardware) as a focused handheld company (my traditional definition: full functionality without the involvement of a mobile phone company) seem to be more and more stuff of memories.

Oh well, I'll be waiting and watching, as I have been for many many years. (Dusts off Palm IIIc, weeps, moves on, and contemplates the iphone)

- Like Mike said, people don't need to carry Windows XP, they need to carry 'data'. So if you are using MS Office, Sun's OpenOffice suite or Dataviz's Docs2Go, it makes no difference. As long as you can carry your .xls .doc files with you. So a proprietary Palm OS over Linux is not a problem at all.

- Treos will play the role of on the fly, quickly grabbing tidbits of info. To not look like a fool in public you have to have a slim device near your face, not some huge flat odd looking slab of a device that will make people look at you funny.

- Treo, with their screen size and mini keyb will never physically be able to offer a full mobile computing experience. There is a usability/productivity threshold that needs to be passed before mass adoption will occur; and the Foleo might just be that device.

- If a person is outrage at the idea of having 2 devices being optimized for their role, then they likely don't need to do mobile computing.

- The best thing in the long run is for Palm to focus on mobile computing devices like the Foleo and eventually come out with a tiny super slim 160x160 micro Treo that has barely anything inside of it, and it communicates with the Foleo as the 'home base'. You can even think of a nano Treo that seamlessly snaps into the home base Foleo and offers additional processing power, emergency battery life sharing (Foleo to Treo and Treo to Foleo), an enhanced 3rd speaker for louder movies (or simulated surroud), the Treo would act as a 2nd screen (dual monitor), etc