A friend writes: “I agree with you and Tim Bajarin — I think the Foleo is cool, but if you already carry a laptop do you really need one?”
Ron K. Jeffries, Foleo Fan, responds:
Yes. I now carry my ThinkPad many places where all I really want is email, instant messaging and a browser. I want it to turn on and off instantly (no laptop does). It should be light, have good battery performance, and offer a useable screen and keyboard.
Having Foleo leverage the mobile broadband connection my Treo offers will save on the order of $60 a month. That saving alone pays back the cost of a Foleo in under a year.
In the future I plan to use be two computers plus a mobile phone. My main PC will be a killer laptop, with a Core Duo 2, hardware virtualization, 2 to 4 G of memory, and a 300 MB hard drive.
Yes, a laptop by definition is portable. However, I’ll often carry my Foleo for the joy of instant on, plus doing everything I wish to do at the bookstore, restauraunt or while drinking a Starbucks.
I especially want email that’s always in sync with my IMAP account. ChatterEmail on my Treo 700p does that, but the screen is tiny and the keyboard only works fro one sentence messages. As you may know, Palm recently bought ChatterEmail. How convenient.
My on the move computing needs are simple:
Email. I read and write email. Web mail clients — Google Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and LaszloMail all work great.
Instant messaging. I like Pidgen (was called GAIM), a free, open source IM client.
Browsing. Firefox or Opera are fine. I read Atom/RSS feeds with Google Reader, in my browser.
Photo viewing. There are plenty to select from in Linux land.
Keep it light and simple. These are not power hungry applications. As we ride the curve of ever lower silicon prices, the Foleo will either get cheaper with the same capabilities, or remain the same price and become more powerful. Most likely both will happen, with different model numbers.
Foleo is not a new idea. The Nolkia 880 is a different collection of points craved from the same general design space. Nokia focuses on multimedia, especially video and audio playback, It has a fabulous screen, is smaller and lighter than the Foleo. But it’s not an email or text machine like the Foleo aims to be.
My friend continues:
[tease]
Foleo is aimed for the shrinking number of desktop users that need a truly portable keyboard device.
One of my favorite machines from the past was a Toshiba T1000 — instant on, DOS 2.11 in ROM, 80C88, MS Works and ASR/VT52 emulator with portable 2400 baud modem so I could dial into CompuServe. At about 6 pounds I carried it everywhere as a companion to my desktop Macintosh II (long before the first PowerBooks…)
But, just to show you that some ideas are a bit too early see the this link… all this original was missing was the Bluetooth link to a phone…
It’s sort of bizarre that Jeff Hawkins went backward in his thinking, but maybe it’s time again. I look forward to checking yours out when it comes in.
