Ross Rubin Editorial on Linux Internet Devices

The Fooleo is not, nor was it ever, available for sale. So why even bother mentioning it? Besides, a <$300 Asus EEE PC 2G Surf has, what, 20x the fucntionality of a Fooleo right out of the box? All the Fooleo had going for it was its screensize and keyboard layout. And the screen's size was terribly mitigated by the inadequate hardware powering it.

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p

"Let the name of Fooleo be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Sunnyvale. Let the name of Fooleo be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time."

Don't you mean "Foleo".
You must be new around here.

Don't act like Palm was the first to come up with the idea of a small laptop like device. Remember the Newton Emate and the AlphaSmarts and the Cassiopeia Fivas and on and on. The Fooleo was even more limiting because it required you to have a Treo to go with it.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm TX (Number 2)
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22, UX50
Casio-EM500
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100

I had an Atari Portfolio in......1989?
http://www.atari-portfolio.co.uk/aboutpf/ta-aboutpf.html

MS-DOS compatible (of sorts), a monochrome "widescreen", a surprisingly robust chiclet keyboard, and no bulky floppy drive. Atari offered a variety of optional expansion cards + plug-in accessories. And it was immortalized in Terminator 2, so 'nuff said.

Prior to that we had the Tandy WP-2/SP-3 that for YEARS had the best keyboard available on an "ultraportable":
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=1256

and this nifty unit by Laser/Vtech:
http://www.larwe.com/museum/laserpc5.html

If you want something a little more modern, look at the classic Psion clamshells with superb keyboards for their size:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_5

So, no, there was *nothing* new or revolutionary about the Fooleo, save Palm's intentional crippling of its functionality and connectivity in order to try and (you guessed it!) sell MORE Treos + data plans!

Had Palm really been serious about wanting to produce a product devoid of carrier interference, they'd have come up with something resembling the Fooleo but CHOCK-FULL of bundled apps and with reasonably robust hardware. Instead, they were looking to tout a neutered, feature-hobbled device as something innovative. Or, Palm could have simply released a slimmer, debugged version of the LifeDrive utilizing flash memory. That's much more in line with their core competence of "PDA-style" devices and not the subnotebook field with which they have zero experience (it's been a long time since Hawkins was at GRiD, ya know!)

At the very least, Palm should have given the Fooleo a standard e-mail client and given it a proper CPU and video hardware capable of playing fullscreen flash video alongside 1-2gb of onboard storage!

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p

That immense resource drain that was the Fooleo's long, protracted development is one of the primary reasons (but far from the ONLY reason!) we are sitting around here yapping while watching the flies buzzing around the carcass of the Palm OS.

And, yes, the 7" EEE PC is fairly toy-like and (IMO) not worthy of all of the hype surrounding it. But I'll probably give the 8.9" EEE a shot running XP before calling it a day. For my purposes (lots of e-mail & word processing/spreadsheets/digital photos) I need an optical drive and a decent-sized keyboard & screen.

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p

I was liking the idea of an instant on, non-WinOS based device with a fullsize Keybd and good screen that could also use MS word and excel. I didnt like the idea that it was underpowered and email required smartphone linked. Plus I knew that it wasnt going to replace my work provided Thinkpad. But it could of been an option for people who travel and also for doing some lite email\web stuff at home.

The Fooleo was "instant on" =only= if the application that was "instant offed" was specially programmed to be instant on.

I'd cite the TreoCentral post by the Fooleo insider who said so but I'm too lazy to (1) remember his name/ID (sorry! Lousy with names! His was B-something I think; he's a PiC user as well) or (2) try to remember some words he used in the post there; the post was about some specific applicaiton that someone was wondering if it could be ported or something like that and he said "Well, we'd have to modify it to...etc etc etc".

> ...it wasn't Ben Combee was it?!?...

Yup, that's him....let me look up his post on TreoCentral...found it! (*):

== "...OpenOffice would require a lot of work to port to the device. You
== would have to rework the whole graphical interface to use the Foleo's
== system libraries...The program would also need logic changes to work
== well in the "instant-on" application model..."

- http://discussion.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=1336614&postcount=42

------

(*) Strangely, he only mentioned "instant" ONCE with all his posts on TreoCentral, according to the Advanced Search function. Somehow, I find that pretty hard to believe.

Anywho, he's a reader/poster here occasionally and may still have Fooleo interest so may read this thread and may comment, since I'm just going by what he posted in the first place.

http://kara.allthingsd.com/category/foleo/

Thanks for the reminder of the Handbook! Yeah, I really wanted one of those! Gateway really should have kept plugging away at that style of ultraportable. They were a good decade+ ahead of their time!

The MSI unit looks GREAT on paper...but can MSI properly support such a beast? I've had a few of their mobos in the past and they just sort of left 'e hanging in regards to BIOS updates/new drivers/support.

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p

No, I'm not pro-Linux at all. Thank (or blame) Nokia for that.

>>>you can modify it until it does

No. I have a LIFE. I DO things. Like go out. Date women. Read books. And know how to properly capitalize.

Imagine that.

As far as we all know, all you do tw is something write in Chinese. That's a full life in contrast, huh?