Pro Foleo

The ever-cantankerous-but-probably-a-decent-guy-in-real-life Mike Cane has published part one of "The Palm Foleo Disaster." There are many, many words there, discussing Palm's mistakes in marketing the Foleo and their decision to kowtow to the geekblogs.

In response to Engadget's big, bad open-letter, particularly the section calling for Palm to "stop wasting money on the Foleo - we know this isn't going anywhere," Cane writes:

There are many people on the Internet — aside from the Linux fringe — who are earnest in their desire to buy the Foleo. Potential customers — the market for products — suddenly don’t matter? Jeff Hawkins was pleased by the personal reactions he received to the Foleo from executives at the D Conference! …

You mean to tell me that people who buy the Foleo won’t start proselytizing it? That they won’t show it to family, friends, coworkers, even total strangers? That people seeing it being used won’t ever ask about it? No blogs will spring up around it? Firsthand reports of real-world usage won’t fly around the Internet? It might sell, in other words, but then die because its happy owners will all keep it a secret?

Great points here, I think. Almost every Foleo hands-on report I read was positive, with some people even saying they had changed their mind after seeing the device.

I continue to believe that there was and still is a significant market for an instant-on device that does a few things well, without the heat, weight, and kludginess of a fully-bloated laptop. And that full keyboard is a must!