Palm Foleo - A small preview

I’ve been waiting for this mysterious Palm device in hopes that it will revive the once amazing & innovative company. I’ve put Palm up there with the short list of American companies who I felt was changing the landscape of personal computing for the better. Jeff Hawkin’s announcement at D conference made me feel a bit underwhelmed. Let’s face it, it’s basically a stripped down, power anemic subnotebook. Why try to market this category as new. Please do not call it a mobile companion. Almost all devices that fit in your pocket now-a-days are “mobile companions”. Lets start disecting this device a little bit. I have a couple of things to say before making a early conclusion (meaning these are just viewpoint and until I actually see and touch this thing, I’ll reserve some judgement on it.

Form Factor: The size of this seems about right for what it’s intended to do, act as an extension to your existing smartphone. I actually like the fact that it comes with a keyboard and other input related devices. It’s seems quite light and if I had to guess on the durability of this device, it’s probably quite rugged given Palm’s track record (unlike some devices that are of the same size. Sony Vaio’s come to mind).

Things I would do differently: Why not make have touch screen on it and foldable so that it can act as a tablet. I would love to turn this thing in portrait mode and use it as an ebook. this would make it a bit more practical and perhaps even open up the ebook market further. Additionally making it into a tablet and allowing for pen inputing (Palm, are you listening? you already have Grafitti) you can take those PPTs further by drawing, or go as far as using it as a white board. You guys want this to be used by the enterprise, well, I’m sure you can use some doodling functions and match that up with the VGA adapter to create some pretty awesome interactive presentations.

Price The introductory price of $499 is a bit high (this is after the $100 rebate). It doesn’t have the wow factor like the Apple iPhone which is also overpriced. I know readers here are probably thinking “well, that’s comparing Apples & Oranges” (no pun intended). The truth is the wow factor is a great marketing vehicle to get people buying…this is the same kind of philosophy that gets impulse buyers (like me) to go order the Apple TV and realizing how underwhelming it is. I had a brief discussion with mobile guru Jose Marinez about this last night and we both agreed that if the price went down to about $200 to $300, we’d get one. Even if it doesn’t feel as useful as I’d like it to be, it wouldn’t hurt as much on the wallet knowing I spent basically a few hundred for a disposable laptop. Executives aren’t the only people you should target with this device. I’d imagine a ton of students wanting to use this even without the smartphone integration. As a wifi machine on campus that can handle 45 minutes of note-taking, that’s pretty great. I remember when I was in college I used the Palm III to take notes during my art class. It was great to sync up my notes and transfer the doc to Word and make a nice study sheet out of it. The one thing that would’ve been great was an imaging app integrated into the memopad. Looking at this device and dreaming that it can turn into a tablet, I think the Foleo could’ve been the killer device for students had it actually allowed for some of these features.

Things I would do differently: Drop the price by a couple of hundred of dollars and market this sucker better. Everyone, and I mean everyone sees this as a subnotebook, not a mobile companion. I think people’s price perception of this device would be higher it was marketed as a subnotebook with nifty mobile integration features. That actually may justify for the price.

Stuff I like: I love the fact that it’s instant on. All devices with a keyboard should act this way. The simple apps are quite nice too. From the net presentation, it seems that the apps are familiar and intuitive. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Palm when it comes to UI on apps. The lightness and the size are a plus. It makes sense to carry around all day. The battery life seems to be nice as well though I’ll put a small reservation on that until I see some real world use. Opera as a browser is fantastic. Probably the best app on this device.

Cons: Price. Too high. Not enough apps to start with (really, no PIM functions?). Using Bluetooth to sync is another potential issue. I can’t run a full day on my Treo 700p with BT on. However, I don’t have a suggestion on what else to use besides a cable so I guess this is the best we’ve got. Lack of editing features for Office apps. Please port a very light version of OpenOffice over somebody! The built in documents to go seems a bit weak. The Foleo is also underpowered. I can’t stream videos on this? Really? This is 2007. We’re in web 2.0 world. You guys spent 5 years creating a device like this and cannot get video to work on it?

Overall, I’m not sure how I’d feel about this device. It has promise. It’s not polished though. It needs more power, probably better battery life, stronger suite of software, and tablet functionality (I do miss grafitti). As of this writing, I can’t see myself purchasing the Foleo. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone either. Plus, I’m quite happy with my Macbook Pro and probably will be happier when the iPhone comes out.