Talking the Palm Foleo With Jeff Hawkins

There's been a range of questions and comments on this blog (and many others) since we announced the Palm Foleo a couple of weeks ago - everything from "what is the idea behind Foleo," to "is it a laptop," to "how would someone use it" and more. We sat down with Jeff Hawkins so he could share his thoughts on a few of the more common questions so far.

Download Palm_Podcast_002_review.mp3

We know this barely scratches the surface of everything out there, but we'll be providing more info and details about the Palm Foleo in the weeks to come.

-The Palm Foleo team

Comments

[Rick Austin]

The Treo 750 is almost the best device on the market - best size, best interface, now supports Windows Mobile. WHY NOT FOCUS ON MAKING IT BETTER! Better screen, multi-touch technology and please for heaven's sake, miniUSB connector (this proprietary sync/power connector literally kills me). HTC has nothing on Palm, their devices are big (WM Professional) or don't have touch screens. I hate to see such promise go away without a fight. I see the Foleo and the Gandolf and think - uh - what could they be thinking. Most business people have laptops and they won't give them up for an underpowered device destined to be a nightmare on the compatibility front. Please, please - invest in R&D and make the Treo "next" the gotta have business device. Take over Blackberry market share, put HTC out in the cold. You can do it. Keep Treo 700 form factor (can't be any bigger). Make sure you have highest speed Internet access but not necessarily WiFi (kills the battery). How about Wi-Max? I wish you the very best.

[Rob B]

This was mentioned by some of the other commentaries, but what I would really like to see from the Foleo is in essence a remote desktop for my PDA. There are times when I would love to run my PDA's apps on a larger screen with a full size keyboard, but I want to be able to run all the apps that are installed on my PDA. It would be great if the screen on the Foleo was actually the a "VNC" version of the screen on my PDA (with better resolution of course). The Foleo would be an ultrathin client that would provide the nicer user interface if I wanted it. It would eliminate the need to write apps for the Foleo and for the PDA. The only "syncing" that would need to occur is the entry of the keyboard, the mouse, and the export of the display. If that were available in the $400 price range, I would absolutely purchase it. It seems like that model would easily extend to any other PDA as well, so Palm could sell it as add on hardware once they wrote the appropriate drivers to export the peripherals on that OS.

[dmm]

Palm...
Something you need to do for the Foleo page on the website... list the apps and developers, as they make their work public, that are out there for it! As people start to see what the developers are doing, they'll have much more reason to buy.

I probably would never have bought a standalone handheld ~10 years ago, let alone my Treo last December, if it hadn't been for the developer community.

[Ken]

I am extremely interested in Foleo *if* it will allow me to remote into my desktop at work. Dragging a PC laptop around solely for Remote Desktop and web browsing is like fishing with hand grenades - serious overkill. I would welcome a small, light device that didn't heat up like a griddle - and Foleo has some real promise.

[Michael Jacobs]

More Foleo posts please.

There seems to be a lot of confusion of what foleo can do and what it can do independent of a treo.

I am *especially* interested in hearing about word-processing on the Foleo. If I buy one it's going to be primarily for that - replacing my Alphasmart.

[stschad]

I think the Foleo sounds pretty cool.

I carry around an AlphaSmart Neo notebook because it is a text editor with a 700-hour battery life. I can beam word processor files from it into my Palm Treo, but I'd really like that 2 pounds of notebook in my bag to do a whole lot more.

I've been sizing up no-hassle notebooks to lighten my load, to stay connected, and to hopefully run something simpler and more stable than Windows, like Linux. My criteria include a machine weighing 2 pounds or less, very quiet (no fan if possible), solid-state storage (if possible), reasonable connectivity, battery life, and price.

I looked at a $2469 Panasonic W5 laptop (2.7 lbs, no fan, 60gB hard disk, 4-10h battery life), then went out to Dynamism.com to explore the bleeding edge of laptops. There I found a $2600 Panasonic R6 (2 lbs, similar specs), a couple of Sony Vaios (TZ90 and G1 models) in the 2 lb range with options for 32gB solid state drives ($2200-$2900), and a Toshiba RX1 ($2300-$3800) weighing less than 2 lbs and supporting up to a 64 gB solid state drive.

The big problem with each of these machines, other than cost, is the operating system. I'm a fair Linux hand but if I bought one of these high-priced beauties I'd be assuming that I could get Linux running and configured to use wireless and mobile broadband. Who knows what Linux would think of their solid state drives?

What I'm really after is the least amount of hassle, which is exactly what the Foleo represents. For the cost of a $2000 Panasonic I could buy four Foleos: one for home, car, office, and a spare! It sounds like the Foleo will play nicely with my Palm phone (just replaced my 650 with a 755), so I will always be able to get out to email and the web whether I'm near a wifi spot or not.

I don't need to watch videos on every device I own. The bit of music and the few books that I listen to on the Treo are enough for me. What I want the Foleo for is email, writing, giving an occasional Powerpoint talk, carrying around a spreadsheet or two, and running command-line editors and programming languages like Python. No file manager on the Foleo? No problem. Because it is an open system there will be. Or just learn how to use the Linux move, copy, list, and delete commands and accelerate your life. I really like the instant-on/instant-off aspect of the Foleo too. How much battery life on a laptop is wasted just booting up and shutting down Windows?

A Foleo is just $300 more than my anemic but useful AlphaSmart? That's a no-brainer: put me down for a couple.

[PaulMc]

I remember buying a Palm i701 (I think this is right) and all the scoffers hated the device. They claimed it answered a question no one asked. This device was a precursor to the Treo. You could surf the web (slowly) and get email. I loved the device! However, it fell out of fashion, but I think it was an important stepping stone to later devices of this ilk.

[KabulBob]

When I first heard about the Foleo, I was very excited. I assumed it was a step further along the AlphaSmart, a device that would run all basic Palm OS core apps and sync all that data with my Palm PDA (Treo 650 in my case). Now I'm hearing that it does not mirror all the data held in my PDA, but will instead run just "3rd party apps", which may or may not transparently sync the data in those apps to my Treo.
WHAT WAS PALM THINKING????
Palm has a small target audience for this device to begin with (people who want a middle platform with larger screen/keyboard between a handheld and a laptop), and I'll bet you that for those of us who are Palm users, MOST have a preference to use the Palm Desktop core apps (v. MS Outlook), either because we just prefer Palm and/or to use AnyThing But Microsoft.
Palm was SO CLOSE to getting me onboard, unless they FIX this Foleo concept to include the core Palm apps, think this thing will crash and burn.
Very sad, as I would like to have and use one if I found it to be useful...