Whose Faulty Vision

Palm Foleo

I’m a big Palm fan, as anyone who has been reading this blog since my Ann Arbor days may remember. But I gotta say, they haven’t done much for me lately. The PalmOS is really getting old, and instead of coming out with updated smartphones, they just announced this Foleo thing.

I don’t know who they think is going to buy this. They can’t possibly think it’ll replace laptops, since it can’t do everything even a low-end laptop can do. But it also can’t replace the Treo, both because it’s too big and bulky and because it relies on the Treo for its Internet connection. So what’s the point? What can I do with the Foleo that I can’t do better with a laptop? Why should I pay $500 for what amounts to a bigger screen and keyboard for my Treo, especially since I’d still have to carry the Treo around too? They’re trying to talk up the fact that it syncs with your Treo, but my iBook does that too, and it does a lot of other things this Foleo can’t.

I don’t get it. They must have done market research on this thing–did they really find a group who wants it? Perhaps once it hits the market it’ll reveal some untapped audience for “sub-notebook” computers that none of the other failed sub-notebooks have managed to reach, but I doubt it.