Palm Foleo

So Palm's new Foleo is basically what was predicted and I can't say I'm running out to get one.

Working on the idea that PDAs and Smartphones were limited by their their small screens and keyboards, the Foleo is a small laptop like device that works with the smartphone (treo and windows mobile now, blackberries and iPhone in the future), giving it a bigger screen (10") and kinda full size keyboard. But it has no hard drive or optical drive and runs Palm's new Linux-based OS. So it's instant on/off like a Palm, does email and has an Opera browser and can read and write MS Office documents. While it has WiFi builtin apparently they're pushing to use the bluetooth connection to the smartphone for a connection.

It syncs data with the smartphone (only with the phone, not the computer). What I don't get is people already have a laptop (or a desktop) and sync stuff to the phone to make it portable. if the Foleo is also supposed to be portable why is it important to sync to the phone too? Or if it's on my phone, will I want to carry this other thing around too. Ok, it's small and only 2.5lbs and apparently gets a real 5 hours of battery life but it's also $500 and not pocket sized.

It's browser can do flash but not well, apparently YouTube videos won't work and it's the fault of the slow processor. The Office stuff comes from Documents to Go, so you have those compatibility headaches too.

Photo Gallery of the Foleo.

Liveblog from the announcement

engadget's version of the event.

Meh.