Analyst Says Foleo Fails to Address Mobile User Needs

And HTC have a large bunch HTCs http://www.htc.com

Anyway, it makes me wonder. My T3 is now 3 years old, and still has more processor power and larger screen than any of the HTC products, it even has more processor power than the Foleo and Treo as well.

I guess that a T3 with an internal GSM radio would be nice, but the thing is that it would make a good PDA, but a lousy phone. Several people i know with a HTC touch screen phone get so tired of the touch screen for phoning and SMS that they purchase another normal phone and use the HTC just as a PDA (the same will happen to the iPhone). With a good link between the PDA and the phone, the phone in the PDA really is redundant, there is no way around that fact, and the solution is the Treo. But the Treo (and any other smart phone for that matter) is not an optimal solution to the problem because the screen size will be much smaller than the PDA, and unit is just too bulky. It is more of a hack to get the PDA and the phone into one single unit than a good solution.

What I really would like is a T3 or TX kind of device with a slim good looking phone that slides into a slot in the PDA. That way I would have one unit, yet have all the benefits of the PDA and the phone. The phone don't even need to have a display (other than a minimalistic one), it could be just a numpad and speakers. They should work perfectly on their own and together. They should be connected with BT when separated, so the numpad on the phone unit could work on the PDA unit.

The same principle could wery well be used on the Foleo as well, and why it isn't already is rather strange, since it is the obvious next step.

On the plus side Jeff hinted at the treo line now deversifying.
I have read of both full screen devices and smaller non Qwerty moddles being mentioned.
How cool would a candybar/flipphone Treo be paired with a PLinux T|X2 auto syncing on the fly.

How good are cargo pants, they're a gadget lovers best friend.

I agree, for my personal taste two separate devices doing their own job is better than a converged one.
My trusty T3 is all I need for keeping organised and my bluetooth phone is the best (for my needs - no flames, please ;-) in keeping me in touch with people, taking fairly good pictures, and entertaining with loads of music and news with FM radio.
Annyoing is when I have to update contacts onto the T3 (it is the "reference") and then propagate them to the phone. A "too much" converged device would not need this step (well, the phone is converged enough to answer three needs fairly well in one single package).
It would really help if the contacts details were correctly matching between the Palm and the phone (which doesn't always happen). But here comes again the foolish will of every Company to introduce "proprietary" features into standard formats...

Maybe the Foleo will fill a niche now and will make many more people feel the need, and pleasure, of writing over a real keyboard while looking at a usable screen. I hope so. Apparently many people do work and connect wirelessly while traveling, so it could be the bridge between an undersized PDA and an oversized Laptop.

Probably what is most needed now, as we are more and more oppressed by techno-gadgets which cannot cooperate well one with another, is a true improvement of the often misused "user experience" concept.
The Foleo appeal will greatly benefit if it will prove to be a real extension of the Treo (and, why not, the TX) line.
It will also be the first to show the long awaited Palm-on-Linux world...

But please, please, please Jeff: look at how many different form factors are in the cellphone world.
Go on with the Treo, go ahead with the Foleo (even invent a new stripped-down Treo without screen and keyboard to be the phone companion of the Foleo),
BUT PLEASE LOOK ALSO towards people (who do not need and will not buy a Treo) still waiting for an updated heir of the T3.
Look at HTC, drop the phone, keep the good (leave the mic and vibra in - please!).
Make a candybar version TX-like, make a clamshell version with a keyboard (keep the graffiti, thanks!).
And youll'have made many, many people happy. Otherwise you will potentially make many people go Apple. Or wathever else. But probably Apple has the ability to make the iPhone usable also as a PDA and sync seamlessly with the Macs; then who needs a Foleo?

Jeff, please, do not throw away your first business and the many people who still love and believe in it.

You guys/gals keep praising the T3....makes me wish I had bought one instead of staying with my Vx for so many years. I don't see the PDA market as 'dead', only in decline due to a lack of innovative products. The Palm O/S has WM beaten handsdown in my view. Plus we don't all need/want one converged device. I use a T|2 with a cheap flip phone and a notebook PC and this combo suits me fine. Lost my last phone in a Shanghai taxi....no major loss as I bought an el cheapo Moto flip phone locally that works fine (once I was able to deactivate the Chinese opera ring tones).

My point is there are many solutions possible and Palm should cater for a diverse market and not put all their eggs in one basket (e.g. the current Treo bricks). Let's have a new version of the T|X, a new flip phone version like the old Treo 270, a full screen converged device, Treos w/o software glitches and so on and let consumers have CHOICE. One size does not fit all.

rpa

Mikecane: What app is taking 15 seconds to load on your LF? I've had my LD for a week or so now, and I'm enjoying it. The worst delay I've experienced has been an occasional 2 seconds for pocket tunes.

Seldom
I never said it was an original idea.
I just asked, how cool would it be?
And it's finaly in reach.

How good are cargo pants, they're a gadget lovers best friend.

Something interesting for those who are arguing that the pda market is dead. Have any of you tried to purchse an old Palm device recently on Ebay. I am looking for a Palm Tungsten C right now and the prices for anything in almost new condtion is still up at close to $200 dollars. I was bidding on a used one with minor cosmetic scratches and a few scratches on the screen and probably a poor battery although they didn't say for sure but it went for over $100 dollars. In my opinion this still points to there being a market for primarily PDA devices.

I've watched Palm PDA prices on ebay recently. Even sometimes a DEAD LifeDrive will pop over $100 even close to $200. T3s have a good resale price too (damnmit!). T2s are generally below $100.

You haven't seen that Asustek laptop yet?

>>>A Linux subnotebook with WiFi has 100 gazillion hacking opportunities. This machine will not die a quiet death and I am positive the community will find excellent ways to leverage this device...

Baloney. The same drooling was done over the Nokia ANti-Net Tabs. End of story.

"Oooh, look! I have Linux in my pocket!"

BFD! What's that mean for the average Joe? Zip.

That nanobook makes the Foleo look plain retarded.
I mean LOOK at the difference. wow

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132622-page,1/article.html

$199!! I repeat, $199!!

"Prices are going to start at $199, rising based on the amount of flash memory that comes with the machine instead of a hard disk. Currently, Asustek plans to sell models with 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB of flash, but that may change between now and when the first Eee PCs go on sale.

Measuring 9 inches wide by 6.6 inches deep, the Eee PC 701 is about 1.5 inches thick with the screen closed and weighs just 31 ounces. Other specifications include a 7-inch monitor, a 300,000-pixel camera, 512MB of DDR2 memory, and Wi-Fi. Next year, Asustek plans to introduce a second Eee PC model, the 1001, which will have a 10-inch screen."

Has anyone noticed that this runs a Linux distro with no clear path to sync with Windows documents and data?

The nanobook comes with OpenOffice, a fully featured Office app that can open far more document formats (including Microsoft Office) than the current Docs to Go on the Palm - RTF anyone?

Even if the nanobook didn't come with OpenOffice it's free and usually quite easy to download then install it on the popular Linux distros.

If you really need Windows I guess one could try installing XP Professional ($299) then OpenOffice for Windows($0) onto the nanobook and it'll still be two dollars cheaper than the Foleo's special offer price! It's been suggested the nanobook has an Intel mobile x86 chip whilst the Foleo doesn't have x86 so Windows is totally out of the question for the Foleo...

I suspect the $199.00 price is with the 4 gig flash

Reading the article the nanobook also comes with 512MB DDR memory.
So the nanobook comes with twice the RAM and sixteen times the storage capacity but at less than half the price of the Foleo...

With respect to Chia, your points are valid, but in the business setting you are not seeing Open Office out there. Also, as pointed out elsewhere the keyboard is NOT standard size. Look at the pad on it, its about the size of a thumb. I do not really mean to dis the Nanobook and the price feature set is something Palm should be looking at. That said, I do not think the two products will be traveling in the same circles. I would be interested to see if it actually ever makes it over the lake, the company press to the contrary. A lot of "gee whiz" tech never gets out of Asia.

"Many men stumble across the truth, but most manage to pick themselves up
and continue as if nothing had happened."
- Winston Churchill

Here's a couple points that people are overlooking:

- If we're talking about business users and the Nanobook, XP Pro's going to run you another $100, Vista Pro about $200.

- With those specifications, Vista's performance is going to pretty marginal. The Foleo's performance is unknown at this point, but odds are it will be pretty good since it's using a custom OS and hardware build by the same company (no guarentees, but history has show this yields much better performance then generic hardware on generic operating systems).

- The entire concept of the Foleo is based around intelligent software that works with your smartphone to make usage between the devices fairly seemless. To what level Palm and outside developers will take this is still unknown, but this early in the a product's life cylce, it's best to pay attention to the concept of the device when you don't have any hands-on experience.

- Marketing, marketing, marketing... VIA has next to no presence in the world of marketing. We are all geeks (myself included) that follow mobile technology, so we're aware of the Nanobook. Unless someone else chooses to market this for VIA, it will remain a geeky reference device. If someone else chooses to market the product, then they will most likely re-brand it and tack on their mark-up. Palm has a great marketing engine that the business world trusts.

I'm still skeptical about the success of the Foleo, I just like to remind people of some of the less-geeky factors that go into building a new product.

Tungsten T --> Palm TX --> Foleo-mini??(like an LD-II with a small attached keyboard??)

"The nanobook comes with OpenOffice, a fully featured Office app that can open far more document formats (including Microsoft Office) than the current Docs to Go on the Palm" Chia

Last time I cheched OpenOffice still isn't compatable with the new Office07 files but Docs2Go is.

"The nanobook with XP Pro comes to $498, a dollar cheaper than the Foleo at its $499 promotional price."
"Vista is a no go unless Microsoft releases a new version to specifically run on these ultramobile PCs." Chia

Vista performance is a biger issue than you think.
XP will no longer be available past the end of the year.
That's the deadline M$ has given resellers like Dell who have continued to sell XP.

How good are cargo pants, they're a gadget lovers best friend.

Has anyone noticed that this runs a Linux distro with no clear path to sync with Windows documents and data?

You mean just like the Foleo?